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' .

[Decepticon]

and fairly good Iapetus images.

Radar and VIMS is also available.

Would love to see this!

[volcanopele]

This release covers the time period from January 1 to March 31, 2006. No RADAR SAR swaths were taken during this period of time. There were three Titan flybys: T10 (ORS covering anti-Saturnian hemisphere), T11 (ORS low-phase inbound over sub-Saturnian hemisphere), and T12 (ORS moderate phase over anti-Saturnian hemisphere). T11 has some good observations, never messed with T10 or T12 too much since it covered the same territory we had seen over and over again without adding to much new information.

Beyond Titan, there is a decent sequence at Enceladus from Rev20 (look for images in the N1516153055 through N1516171418 range). There are also decent Rhea observations during each orbit (Rev20-21-22). rev22 has some decent Rhea saturn-shine images. Finally, Rev21 has a couple of observations of Tethys over Penelope crater.

EDIT: actually, there was a distant SAR look on T12. I'll try to post that within an hour.

EDIT again...: and that isn't available yet. Hopefully it will be up by Monday.

[ugordan]

Here's an 8 frame animation showing the late January 2006 "flyby" of Iapetus from this PDS batch. Closest approach was around 880 000 km.


Three of the frames are natural color RGB composites, the rest are stretched color IR/G/UV processed to match natural color views. Images have been magnified 2x for better visibility.

[remcook]

cool

[TritonAntares]

Here's an 8 frame animation showing the late January 2006 "flyby" of Iapetus from this PDS batch.
Closest approach was around 880 000 km.

Three of the frames are natural color RGB composites, the rest are stretched color IR/G/UV processed to match natural color views.
Images have been magnified 2x for better visibility.

Nice animation...

More on Japetus there? What about the november 27th far-encounter in ~2 mio. km distance?

Bye.

[Michael Capobian...]

Here's an 8 frame animation showing the late January 2006 "flyby" of Iapetus from this PDS batch. Closest approach was around 880 000 km.

Wow. That's a really good way to tie the Moat/Snowman region to eastern Cassini Regio. That's the first time I've noticed the large crater on the eastern edge of the Landslide Basin. And it's interesting that the claw marks are parallel to the tic-tac-toe ridges. (It really would be nice to have some official names for these features. )

Michael

[ugordan]

What about the november 27th far-encounter in ~2 mio. km distance?

November 2006? That won't hit PDS for another 9 or so months. By then the closest flyby ever will be over!

[elakdawalla]

EDIT: actually, there was a distant SAR look on T12. I'll try to post that within an hour.

EDIT again...: and that isn't available yet. Hopefully it will be up by Monday.

Jason, is that T12 SAR up yet?

--Emily

[volcanopele]

Not that I can see. It is possible that I was wrong and that there wasn't a distant SAR look on T12, but I could have swore they did.

[JTN]

(pointed here by Emily's post in another thread)

It is possible that I was wrong and that there wasn't a distant SAR look on T12, but I could have swore they did.

FWIW, the mission description only mentions radiometry/scatterometry (the obs mentioned in the data playback section are RADAR_022OT_WARM4TI12001_RIDER and RADAR_022TI_T12OUTRAD001_PRIME). I also found T12_SEQ_DESIGN_MEMO.PDF, which says:

Like T4, this RADAR data collection includes only radiometry and scatterometry. RADAR will not operate at the closest approach time, therefore no altimeter or SAR data can be collected. The radiometry scans will include compressed scatterometry for the second time. Before the two outbound radiometry/compressed scatterometry scans, there will be a small scatterometry segment that follows an iso-doppler SAR-style profile with a constant incidence angle of 20 degrees.

[Bjorn Jonsson]

The April 1, 2007 PDS release is out with new ISS, VIMS and RADAR data.

I have looked at all of the ISS images and updated my summary of Cassini images at http://www.mmedia.is/bjj/misc/css_stuff/im...s_overview.html.

I will soon be adding a list of flybys for each satellite near the top of the document ("a summary of the summary").

The ISS release wasn't particularly interesting to me this time. Some highlights:

* Images of Iapetus down to a range of ~600,000 km
* Two targeted flybys of Titan
* Many spectacular satellite mutual events since Cassini was very close to the ring plane
* Interesting images of Hyperion, Janus, Atlas and Pan
* Rhea global color at a range of ~480,000 km
* Many distant high phase images showing Enceladus' plumes
* Saturn star occultations

Incidentally, I ran into a few cases of erroneously formatted numbers in several of the index.tab files that caused some problems when loading these files into an Access database so I'm going 'complain' to the PDS. Example: 1.0524616e-
I suspect 'very small' numbers may get incorrectly formatted, possibly numbers smaller than 0.001 or 0.0001.

I could make the database available if someone can host it, it's too big for me to do so (about 55 MB zipped). It contains all of the information from all of the index.tab files on volumes COISS_1001 to COISS_1009 and COISS_2001-COISS_2023.

[ugordan]

Is anyone having luck accessing the PDS site, namely http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/? It's broken for me at least since yesterday.

[tedstryk]

Is anyone having luck accessing the PDS site, namely http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/? It's broken for me at least since yesterday.

No, no luck for me.

[Bjorn Jonsson]

Same thing here. Fortunately I finished downloading the ISS data before this started .