Still no images of Tethys (I wonder if they are on the ground now) but some new images of the rings - however, I think there should be more. If the Tethys images do not show up, assuming they were received we may not see them until several weeks from now (at the CICLOPS site) or even not until a year from now (at the PDS)

Ummm, they are not on the ground yet... I'm getting concerned.

Maybe they didnt take any pictures after all....... I believe these orbits are designed to study the rings?

Then a small movie (cannot resist!) - click to see animation! :

Expect something on this today....

EDIT: Okay, maybe not today. Maybe Monday. JPL

Hyperion again: http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/view.php?id=971

Can't wait to see it up close.

Two wonderful Saturn images taken on May 04, 2005 from approximately 1.2 MKm.
Thi is a rgb "real color" combination:

and this a M3 (methan filter) mosaic:

enjoy!

I thought this delay was because of the IAU Circular needed to announced S/ 2005 S 1, but now I see that this delay is once again caused by JPL.

BTW, the IAU Circular 8524 on May 6th announced S/ 2005 S 1. Don't have the text of this yet. If anyone does, please post it here. The IAU Circular page is back up (though you still need a password to read the circulars, http://cfa-www.harvard.edu/iauc/RecentIAUCs.html ).

Info I can say because I am sure it is in the circular is that S/ 2005 S 1 is a newly discovered satellite of Saturn discovered by Cassini ISS. This new satellite, ~7.5 km across, was first found on May 1. S/ 2005 S 1 is located within the Keeler Gap of the outer A ring.

C. C. Porco, CICLOPS, Space Science Institute, Boulder; and the Cassini Imaging Science Team report the discovery of a new satellite of Saturn, designated S/2005 S 1, orbiting within the Keeler gap in Saturn's outer A ring. (The object had been previously inferred from the presence of features observed on the outer edge of the Keeler gap; cf. Porco et al. 2005, Science 307, 1226, Fig. 10). The object was discovered in six images taken over 16 min on May 1 from a time-lapse sequence of 0.180-s narrow-angle-camera exposures that were targeted to the illuminated side of the outer edge of the A ring (with phase angle about 33 deg and image scale 6.9 km/pixel). S/2005 S 1 was subsequently found in 32 (7 km/pixel) low-phase images taken of the F ring on Apr. 13 (spanning 18 min) and again in two high-resolution (3.54 km/pixel) low-phase images taken on May 2, when its 7-km disk was resolved. The satellite orbits Saturn every 0.594 day at a distance of 136500 km. The estimated geometric albedo is 0.5. The data are too coarse to yield any statistically significant orbital eccentricity or inclination.

Is this it?
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...0/N00031664.jpg
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...0/N00031659.jpg
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...0/N00031656.jpg
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...0/N00031653.jpg

Yep, that's it. Hopefully some better views will be released this week. It better.

I will put together something tomorrow morning on my blog now that I know how far I can go.

It seems rather obvious in those images, why wasn't it discovered then instead of on May 1? Did everyone assume it was Pan like I did at first when looking for it in those images?

So what is the holdup with this release? Images were certainly released sooner after other flybys? Is there some sort of discovery or important finding (besides this new moon), or is it just a "run of the mill" image release?

It is a rather small moon. Most likely we are now just starting to stare at the rings for a long enough time span with high enough resolution in order to observe this moon.

As noted earlier, this moon is not completely unexpected.

Well, as I said earlier, I thought the hold up was the IAU Circular which would need to announce the new moon first. But now I suspect it is just JPL. Unfortunately, I have very little connections with the small satellite portion of the team, and only really care about these little guys when one is discovered or we starting seeing surface features (a la Phoebe or Epimetheus).