Cassini image database & updates, And notifications of PDS data releases Options

[Bjorn Jonsson]

I have noticed that the January 1, 2007 Cassini PDS release is already available, see http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/data/cassi...assini_orbiter/

I haven't downloaded all of the imaging data and I'm just beginning to digest what I already have but there are some beautiful images of Enceladus' plumes and satellite mutual events, images of the G and D rings and interesting images of Saturn's nightside and fairly good Iapetus images.

Radar and VIMS is also available.

All in all a nice 'Christmas gift' .

[elakdawalla]

I just went through the process of creating an index page for Dione, using the 2 pixels per degree (=228 pixel diameter) size cutoff:
http://planetary.org/data/cassini/dioneattempt/
WARNING: to view this page requires you to download about 42 MB of data.
[Note: I didn't bother uploading the full-size images, only the thumbnails, so the images won't link to anything. Also, I didn't yet include all the fields I mentioned in my previous post; I did intend to include the filters and stupidly forgot. Next time around they'll be in there.]

This included more than 500 images, but after seeing the results I don't think it was enough. Cassini has so danged many filters that those 500 images were for a relatively small number of distinct observations (22), most of them on nontargeted flybys; the query did not pull in nearly as many global shots of the moon as I was hoping to get. So I think I will back away and try the 1 pixel per degree cutoff next time.

What do you think of the layout, with one observation per line? I think I will reduce the size of the thumbnails next time. They are currently 256 pixels -- I think I will reduce to 128 or even 100.

I used IMG2PNG to convert these, and did calibration, but the calibration didn't seem to work for the WAC images for some reason.

Comments?

Emily

[tedstryk]

I like it. Perhaps you could do it with more images, but do it yearly (in other words, separate pages for 2004, 2005, 2006, etc). One thing (not sure if it is just because you are still working), the links to the PNG images don't work.