Could the high radiation levels caused the pointing errors Gordan?

Bjorn, you're going to have to put this animation on YouTube - it's simply awesome!

I'm disappointed in the BBC's report on this story; it gives the nutcases a certain amount of credence they really don't deserve:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7205004.stm

Here's the Mariner 10 view of the same area, seen under a higher Sun:

http://ser.sese.asu.edu/M10/IMAGE_ARCHIVE/CLEAN/0000145.png

Stu,

Check out the screenshot I've culled from the following animation:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFCrvvn57AM



The Caloris basin (or half of it) is visible inside the green circle. Messenger will have a good look at it on the outbound leg of the encounter.

Ian

Awesome views Gordan! (Happy New Year, by the way).

Have you ever considered publishing your work in a book, via Lulu, perhaps? I would certainly buy a copy...

Ian.

Here's a stacked, IR-Green-UV composite, at a very low phase angle:



Is it my imagination, or is that bright spot at the center of the disc a result of the zero-phase 'opposition effect' ?



Ian.

Here's my IR-Green-UV composite:



Edit: changed the orientation so that the south pole is now at the bottom of the image.

The finished product:

Here's a 'work-in-progress' version of the latest mosaic:

Edit: I've adjusted the colours to something approaching the right balance; now all I need to do is register the moons and clouds...

Edit: Clouds are registered, now for the moons...

There's a lot going on in this mosaic:



At a guess I'd say that's Dione casting a shadow onto Saturn's northern hemisphere, but would need to check. Nice bright storm in the southern hemisphere too.

I've reprocessed the colours in this mosaic in light of the official Photojournal release, which only covers the bottom-left corner of the entire view:



Unfortunately, it seems as if the centre tile is over-exposed to the point of saturation, although I haven't yet looked at the PDS release to see if that is indeed the case.

Ian.

A stacked and cleaned-up version:

A very rough and ready colour composite:

A desktop-size merge of the above two images:

A couple of nice limb shots, featuring Mimas and Prometheus:

Edit: That's excellent Gordan! Why don't you submit it to APOD?

Here's my attempt to put together the 3-frame WAC mosaic, taken through the Clear and IR3 filters:

Thanks for the further explanation Gordan - everything seems clear in my mind now!

...and nice image Stu: I like the 'enhanced' colours!

Gordan,

I'm always keen to improve my image processing skills, so I'm very grateful for your advice indeed. However, I'm having a little trouble understanding what you mean by "applying transparency to get the best of all worlds".

Do you mean that I should have two sets of Red and Blue raws in a single image, aligning one set with the limb and rings, and the other with the clouds? Then selectively combining different areas of the two Red and Blue layers so that they align with the static Green layer?

That's what I've done to achieve the following result (although I haven't bothered to properly align the separate Mimas apparitions):



Thanks for your help,

Ian.

and here's a version that's registered on the atmospheric features, as opposed to the rings and limb:

...

This is quite a decent WAC view of Saturn that I've quickly put together:

If anyone's interested, here is some more BBC coverage of Apollo with James Burke, Patrick Moore and Sir Bernard Lovell. This time, it's 1968 and the flight of Apollo 8:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=DWCYq7gE0wY

Would somebody with the necessary skills (i.e., not me) be able to overlay the southern hemipshere radar strip onto Steve Albers's ISS Titan map? That would be a wonderful way to put the new data into context.

Thanks,

Ian.

Here's another clip of James Burke covering Apollo for the BBC. This time, it's the Apollo 13 splashdown, and Patrick Moore can also be seen in the studio:

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

This clip captures the sheer anxiety and sudden relief of the re-entry better than any other footage I have seen (notice how Burke keeps his fingers crossed prior to signal acquisition).

Ian.