The unlit side of the rings |
The unlit side of the rings |
Jul 27 2006, 10:56 AM
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#1
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IMG to PNG GOD Group: Moderator Posts: 2254 Joined: 19-February 04 From: Near fire and ice Member No.: 38 |
Cassini has previously imaged the unlit side of the rings but now it is doing extensive observations of the unlit side. For the first time in its mission Cassini is spending a significant amount of time north of the ringplane - earlier it has done so only near periapsis but this orbit is different.
This is a quick RGB composite I did from wide angle images: I made no attempts to correct the color - this is probably not very far from the true color of the rings. Large color variations are apparent, the C ring and the Cassini division appear much more bluish than the thicker rings (A and B ). It should be noted that these images were very probably downliked with the 12 -> 8 bit encoding which basically means that dark areas appear too bright in this image because I did not correct for this. It's also interesting to compare this image to Voyager images: Voyager 1: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02241 Voyager 2: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01955 Voyager 2: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01389 |
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Aug 1 2006, 01:57 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1887 Joined: 20-November 04 From: Iowa Member No.: 110 |
The rings about a quarter of the way up form the bottom of this image look distorted.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...2/N00064487.jpg |
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Aug 1 2006, 05:38 AM
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#3
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2492 Joined: 15-January 05 From: center Italy Member No.: 150 |
Alan, I cannot see the distorsion... exactly, which rings and how they are distorted?
PS: thanks for great unlit side view and the beeatiful animation, Bjorn! -------------------- I always think before posting! - Marco -
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Aug 1 2006, 06:04 AM
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#4
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Dublin Correspondent Group: Admin Posts: 1799 Joined: 28-March 05 From: Celbridge, Ireland Member No.: 220 |
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Aug 1 2006, 10:19 AM
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#5
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3648 Joined: 1-October 05 From: Croatia Member No.: 523 |
I can see it but to me it looks as if the rings have quite a rough texture - it's almost as if they were drawn by someone with a fairly heavy brush action. Three words: image compression, noise & non-flatfielded raw images. You're trying to pull way too much out of them. When calibrated they will likely look very smooth (apart from spokes) at this distance. -------------------- |
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