Saturn's Rings To Shine As Never Before Options

[DDAVIS]

I have made a new version of the Saturn Eclipse view, based on an RGB series obtained with darker exposures well suited to bring out the colors of the dimmer limb glow along the north. This has been combined with hand retouching on the rings to bring out the subtle colors seen in other views along with some attempt at plausable overall brightness values. I especially tried to bring out the colors apparantly shown along the northern atmosphere in the RGB images.
The actual data will probably show more gradations in tone along the limb allowing better such color renditions to be made. Although looking at the preview jpegs is obviously a poor basis for judgement, I think it probable based on observations of Earth in similar lighting conditions that the brighter part of the atmospheric glow would appear blue along its upper fringe, and red as the atmosphere filters out the lowermost glow nearest the planet. What colors would visually dominate are problematical, but the overall thickness of the brighter portions of the atmospheric glow seem roughly similar in all 3 filtered images giving a very rough impression that no one color heavily dominates near the Sun. The bleed on the red channel far outshines that of the others, giving the bias for the color of the Sun. The optical reflections seen in some images has been added to make the Sun look like a bright red point source. A version without the reflection also exists.

Don

http://www.donaldedavis.com/2003NEW/NEWSTUFF/CASSECLIPSE.jpg

[paxdan]

I have made a new version of the Saturn Eclipse view

yowza, that is really rather good.

[ugordan]

Very nice, Don! The red sun reminds me of those laser pointing thingies, sort of cool in its own way. I think you have Saturn upside down, though -- the north pole is at the bottom in your image. Which may explain the bluish tint of the atmosphere there. The rings might also be more bluish in forward-scattered light than that. See this VIMS sliced view of the unlit side:

[DDAVIS]

[quote name='ugordan' date='Oct 3 2006, 09:24 AM' post='71098']
Very nice, Don! The red sun reminds me of those laser pointing thingies, sort of cool in its own way. I think you have Saturn upside down, though -- the north pole is at the bottom in your image. Which may explain the bluish tint of the atmosphere there.

Thanks! I have 'righted' it.


The rings might also be more bluish in forward-scattered light than that. See this VIMS sliced view of the unlit side:

This is intriguing. I wonder if any VIMS data was gathered of the limb glow during the eclipse?

Don

[ugordan]

The occultation lasted about 12 hours and they more than likely acquired several VIMS data cubes during that period. The problem is the cubes have a pretty low spatial resolution and they're bound to be very pixelated. The color of the atmospheric glow will be deducible from the data, however. That is, unless the cubes get severely overexposed which is always a realistic chance.

[paxdan]

zOMG

[volcanopele]

This is also discussed at http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.p...ost&p=72285

[GregM]

image quote not needed and removed.


That is one of the finest images in the history of spaceflight. Period.

[Borek]

Here history is made.

[alan]

A different way of seeing the rings as never before: visible all the way around without being obstructed by Saturn (simulation only now, images later)
http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?t...=1&showsc=1
http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?t...=1&showsc=1

[ugordan]

Cassini already had a similar viewpoint 16 days ago. This is when we got images of the south pole.
I doubt Cassini will capture an all-encompassing mosaic here because:
1. The angular size of the ring system is huge, around 40 and 30 degrees, respectively. This makes it too wide even for the wide-angle camera which has a 3.5 degree FOV.
2. Cassini is near periapsis and a prolonged imaging sequence (such as this one would have to be) would take the s/c quite far and the imagery would be distorted, requiring fancy reprojections.

We'll probably get south pole images again, though.

[volcanopele]

While we are too close for preforming a full-system mosaic, that would be a great geometry to preform some radial and/or azimuthal scans

[nprev]

...wow. I am absolutely astonished by the amount of detail in this shot...the ringlets have ringlets have ringlets....

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...5/N00069999.jpg

[ugordan]

This sequence has wide-angle frames looking scaled the way narrow-angle ones usually do.
Any idea what distance this was taken from?
Check out the star trails in this image -- this is a testament to the precision of Cassini's relative tracking. A frame taken around periapsis when both the rings and Cassini are speeding like crazy, yet the image doesn't seem blurred the slightest bit! Furthermore, this was probably a short exposure, the star trails being long implies pretty fast tracking.

[dilo]

...wow. I am absolutely astonished by the amount of detail in this shot...the ringlets have ringlets have ringlets....

Yes, absolutely.
Looking to the full sequence, it seems Cassini mapped all rings... I made a stitch of the first five pictures showing A and outher B and structure is breathtaking :

(I had to heavly correct gamma/contrast/luminosity in order to match images, followed by 90-deg rotation + vertical blur in order to reduce noise).

Interesting also this picture: I do not know if the glow in the space between A and F rings is a optics reflection, but if is real (tenuous material between illuminated from behind) the small dark object in the center could be Prometheus...?