Exquisite Saturn Images Options

[Floyd]

Here is a nice image. Note how the rings at the bottom of the image are lit by Saturn, then fade to illumination from the Sun. Some of the rings change from light to dark and other dark to light. As a plus, we even get a moon shadow. Carolyn, special request: Take a set of color images next time--even better, take a color mosaic with the NAC.

[ugordan]

I've gone back to the Cassini solar eclipse sequence of Sep 15th, 2006 and did a couple of color shots I haven't seen reproduced elsewhere. First off, for context, is a wide-angle, full resolution RGB shot of Saturn that I posted already, but I've since cleaned up and sanitized the charge bleed flare a bit:



If you click on the above image, you'll be taken to the description page and then if you hover your mouse over the image several inset boxes will appear. Clicking on the text below them will bring you to a narrow-angle color zoom of the limb location. Click "all sizes" to see the wide-angle frame in full resolution. It's twice the resolution of the disc in the official eclipse mosaic and uses actual RGB data, while the official mosaic is based on infrared and UV data. Compare the respective colors each approach gives.

Here are direct links to the limb shots (the ones that weren't overexposed badly):



They aren't much to look at, but as I said - we don't often get to see Saturn's sunsets like this. The sky around the north pole is a noticeably clearer blue color.

Particularly interesting to me is the rightmost one here where a nicely defined, detached haze layer can be seen running around a narrow band across the planet's equator (the terminator itself is overexposed white and has two charge bleeds I attempted to clean up so don't over-analyze any kinks/structure in it). I've seen the haze layer before in some shots, but not in others and this I guess explains why.

If you look at the first two images in a dark environment, you can get a hint of the E ring beyond the planet. Brightness settings are individual for each footprint as I wanted maximum brightness without saturation so they are not cross-comparable.

[nprev]

Absolutely stunning, Gordan; thanks!!!

[cbcnasa]

Excellent work on the images, thank you.

[ugordan]

Wow, those rings are really getting dark...



EDIT: rotated image back so north is up

[stevesliva]

That photo is beautiful... the framing/cropping is perfect. I know a photo's dramatic when I start humming Also sprach Zarathustra.

[volcanopele]

Not bad ugordan. keep in mind that we are looking over the north polar region at the time, the unlit side of the rings. So north was "up" in the original frames.

This image set certainly makes a great desktop background.

[ugordan]

That's the north hemisphere? Geez, look away for a few weeks and the blue color vanishes completely. Oh well... Though that would explain why the rings turned out darker than I expected.

[volcanopele]

Yeah, the image was taken while we are above the ring plane.

The blue color is there to an extent. We can definitely see bluish haze over the NP region (actually, it more green, I guess that's what you get when you combine blue haze and yellow atmosphere). Fainter haze can be seen further south, but you are right, it isn't as distinct.

[scalbers]

Very nice images ugordan. It seems like the blue layer even at the NP is slightly detached, so it isn't simply Rayleigh scattering in a clear atmosphere making the blue as I would have anticipated seeing.

[ugordan]

That's an instrument artifact, Steve (talking about the image above, not the narrow-angle eclipse frames). Wide-angle blue frames are always more fuzzy than red/green, even when looking at solid objects. These shorter wavelength images also appear to me to have a slight geometric distortion (chromatic aberration?) and one would need to slightly resize them to register with other filters better. I didn't do that above, hence the blue fringe.

[phase4]

Out of interest I remapped a timelapse sequence of Prometheus moving along the F ring so that it would reveal the gravitational effect over a longer distance.
Please note that the shape of the ring doesn't represent it's actual path. I hope you like it.

[dilo]

You did a beautiful work, phase4!

[Ant103]

Very very very hard working on the "raws" of the 12th july mosaic. A lot of shifting between frames because of the move of Cassini during the taken.

See the working space in Gimp :


And the final result :


There is aways shiftings and exposure adjustment is perfectible, but this is the best I can do now.

I think that Gordan will produce a better picture than mine .

[PDP8E]

ant,

holy guacamole!
that is very cool