Here's my RGB version of the Titan crescent that's just appeared on the raw images page:

Here's my version - I merged the Hue channel with 50% of the Lightness channel:

Wow - is this the region periodically disturbed by the resonance with Mimas? That would certainly help explain the chaotic appearance of that ringlet.

Great work Jason - the mosaics are wonderful!

Here's a contemporary interview with Linda Morabito, who was first to spot the volcanic plumes on Io:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1lp1LXRjRE#t=2m4s&fmt=6

Here's the official JPL visulization of the Voyager 1 flyby; a contempory computer animation by Jim Blinn with satellite textures by Rick Sternbach (who later went on to work on Star Trek):

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8...45219&hl=en

If anyone has a better quality version of this vintage clip, I'd love to obtain a copy.

Ian.

I graduated from the womb in 1981 and it was the Voyager 2 encounter with Neptune in 1989 that ignited my passion for Astronomy, with a particular focus on Apollo and exploration of the planets.

Incidentally, here is a clip of the BBC's live coverage of the re-entry of Apollo 13:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUP5IKyOiio

What a pity this shot of Prometheus's shadow on the rings is truncated:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/rawi...?imageID=181348

Thanks for the great feedback guys! I'm just happy that the colour balance seems to be about right this time. For comparison, here is a reduced version of the raw composite:



The adjustments I made at this point, for what it's worth, were as follows:

• R/G/B levels: -6 -16 -35
• and Gamma correction: 0.70

Ian.

Well, I finally finished the full-globe mosaic - I'm not 100% happy with it, but I suppose there's only so much you can do with the raw JPEGs. Hopefully, this has more realistic colour than my previous efforts:

Here's a little preview of one side of a full-globe mosaic that's on the RAW page at the moment:

That's a wonderful mosaic Gordan - what method did you use to sharpen the image? It's worth comparing to this excellent amateur image that was taken at around the same time:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/ethanallens/3138962663/

I must learn how to calibrate the PDS imagery one day... at the moment, I just enjoy the 'hot off the press' feeling of putting together a colour view from the raws that were taken only a couple of days previously.

Ian.

This view from the south has the C-ring visible in silhouette, and a moon shadow (although I don't know of which moon):



Edit: Looks like the mystery moon is Tethys.

I couldn't resist doing this mosaic either; there's some rather picturesque storms in the southern hemisphere:

Here's another two-frame mosaic:

Thanks Bjorn.

Yes, the northern hemisphere is really displaying a varied selection of pale blues and greens at the moment. Also, it won't be long before the south pole completely disappears into the darkness of winter:

I couldn't resist putting together this two-frame mosaic when I saw it earlier today:



Edit: rotated this mosaic to match the two subsequent ones.

Here's another couple of views; this time of the southern hemisphere, from just under the ring plane:

My first Saturn composite of 2009:

How can I forget Mattias Malmer's wonderful mosaic of Io?

http://rapidshare.com/files/178980826/io_big.jpg.html

Emily, for one of my Christmas presents, I had Bart Declercq's magnificent mosaic of the full-Moon printed out on a sheet of Kodak paper, 16-inches square:

http://www.astronomie.be/bart.declercq/Ful...4_processed.jpg

For some reason the subtle albedo variations of the Moon at this phrase fascinate me more than the terrain variations visible any other time of the lunar month. Bart's image is full of eye-candy, and I could stare at it for hours!

Ian.

New image up on the raw page - seems like the aiming was off a little:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...ails174939.html

Thanks Gordan - I've fixed it now!

...and for the hell of it, a general view of the left and right ansae:

Here's my quick-and-dirty attempt at a Cassini spokes movie:



The full size, uncompressed AVI can be found here:

http://rapidshare.com/files/163069576/spokes.avi.html

Emily, for the sake of completeness, could the locations of PIA06252 and PIA06251 be added to your composite?