OK, thanks Doug for the clarification. A great pity he decided to leave.

Ian.

Does anyone know what's happened to Don Mitchell? His contributions to this forum, especially on the subject of Soviet unmanned exploration, were particularly fascinating.

Was he banned, or did he ask to have his account terminated?

Ian.

Here's the latest six-frame mosaic:



It really is a pity that the WAC doesn't seem to have an adequate enough sun shield.

Phil,

Is there any chance you would consider authoring a book on small Solar System bodies at some point in the future? From Phobos and Deimos, to the co-orbital moons of Saturn, I'm sure it would be a fascinating read!

Ian.

Mattias,

Could you elaborate a little on the content of the email you received from Ms. Porco? What exactly was the nature of her objection to your wonderful Saturn mosaic (which sat proudly on my desktop for many weeks, I might add)?

I'm disgusted and appalled that a senior member of the Cassini imaging team could react this way to members of the general public working with the raw imagery. The way I see it, if you're going to make the raw pictures available for people to access, don't moan and whinge if they actually decide to do something constructive with them.

I'm quite angry about this, and I was formerly a big admirer of Ms. Porco's work on Voyager!

Ian.

Is this yet another new ring, or merely just a clump in the E ring?

Here are two great recent Cassini pictures of the D Ring:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...3/N00066088.jpg

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...3/N00066089.jpg

I've merged these two images to produce the following version that preserves faint and dusty areas, without washing out the brighter ringlets:



Ian.

Sorry, but I can't resist:



My apologies to SigurRosFan

Ian.

Here is probably the best shot of the new "H-ring":



http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...3/W00017856.jpg

I would agree with Alan that this ring is probably linked to Janus and Epimetheus.

Ian.

Is this a new (albeit very faint) ring between the F and G rings?



Could this become known as the H-ring?

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...3/W00017882.jpg

Ian.

Phil,

Is it my imagination, or is there a long scarp-like feature visible in the Saturn-shine, near the right limb?



Also, which hemisphere of the moon are we looking at here? North or South?

Ian.

Bravo! A brilliant mosaic, indeed.

I'm sure that this view would make a nice comparison to the Voyager 2 imagery:



Ian.

Real purdy

And of course, Uranus must be reclassified as a Hemorrhoid...

Here's the best I could do with the latest set of raws images from Cassini:



Ian.

Thanks to Rob's earlier research, I've picked out the C and D rings in the latest Cassini image:



C is rendered in green, while D is rendered in yellow.

Ian.

Great work Bjorn!

Dilo,

Here's a couple of earlier Cassini pictures of Dione that show Cassandra to good effect:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...3/N00037561.jpg

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...1/N00035168.jpg

And here's a PDF discussing the origin of the feature:

http://www.planetary.brown.edu/m42/m42_68.pdf

Cheers,

Ian.

Here are the original versions of the two rough mosaics featured in the previous post:



Ian.

I've put together two VERY rough mosaics of Tethys from the latest flyby, and put them in a composite along with an image of the moon taken on December 24th 2005:



In each of the three pictures, the blue arrow points to the central peak of Melanthius, while the red arrow points to the central peak of Odysseus (the profile of Melanthius can just be discerned on the December image, right on the limb). The green line denotes the location of the boundary between the two types of terrain.

Not labelled, but still very obvious in all three pictures, is the "dust streak" in the northern hemisphere next to Odysseus.

Ian.

"That's one small pixel for SMART, one giant leap for mankind..."

Shadow of a moon and the F-ring on Saturn's northern hemisphere:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...eiImageID=78141

One of the co-orbitals possibly?

Here's a stacked version of the current Hyperion image: