Cassini "Kodak Moments" Options

[jasedm]

I don't know if this happened or not CAP-team - I haven't seen any images with the shadow - would have been beautiful though!
Following on the theme of 'Kodak' moments, I've been having a play around with the solar system simulator, and during the very close flyby of Dione on 7th April 2010, there is a great opportunity to catch 'Titan-rise' from behind the moon. Titan will be less than 1,000,000km from Cassini at that time, and Dione less than 5,000km.
I wonder if it would be possible to include a shot in the sequences (perhaps with the WAC rather than NAC at that range)
Here's what it would look like just after Titan-rise:

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[CAP-Team]

I don't know if this happened or not CAP-team - I haven't seen any images with the shadow - would have been beautiful though!

That's because it's next year

[jasedm]

Oops I shall look forward to it then.....

[jmknapp]

Was thinking it would be cool to see an animation of all of Cassini's ISS activities in a "typical" day--here's the result, for the 24-hour period starting tonight at 22AUG2008 00:00:00 UTC:

A day in the life of Cassini ISS, Aug. 22, 2008 (47MB mpg file)

It runs generally at 60x real time (1 min = 1 sec), mostly from the point of view of the WAC/NAC cameras, with a little bit of the Ka-band pointing at the end (I think that's for radio/gravity science?).

The CICLOPS Looking Ahead page for Rev81 says this about the Aug. 22 activities:

A busy slate of observations is planned for ISS on August 22, the last day of Rev81. A ten-frame, wide-angle-camera color mosaic covering Saturn and the main ring system is planned for the first ISS observation of the day. Two additional ring observations are planned, this time of the faint outer rings. These include an observation of the arc in the G ring and a photometry sequence covering the E ring. Two satellite photometry observations are planned, first covering Tethys’ sub-Saturn hemisphere, then covering Mimas’ sub-Saturn hemisphere. Finally, Cassini will observe various small satellites in the inner part of the Saturn system in order to better constrain their orbital motions.

Cassini begins Rev82 on August 22.

[jasedm]

Cool indeed!
Nice work.

[ugordan]

Cool video, Joe. The Ka band pointing is most likely a data downlink session.

[jmknapp]

The Ka band pointing is most likely a data downlink session.

Are they using Ka band routinely for downlink? I googled it and came up with a number of references to gravitational wave studies and also studies during solar conjunction. The Cassini Significant Events page says that solar conjunction will occur Sept. 1-7. Maybe they will be using Ka-band more frequently around this time?

Right now as seen from Earth, Saturn is about 11 degrees from the Sun & will get to about 1.7 degrees separation on Sept. 4--so it doesn't actually go behind the Sun, but would have to transmit through the solar plasma with all its fluctuations, etc. A paper, The Cassini 2000 solar conjunction: Ka-band and X-band signal propagation through the solar corona, indicates that Ka-band is much better at getting through the corona:



If I read that right, maybe Ka-band would be usable right through the conjunction? The range Sept. 1-7 about covers a 3-degree separation.

[remcook]

From Emily's blog:
"After that crazy flyby of Enceladus, Cassini's entering a relatively quiet period with few flybys. Saturn is approaching solar conjunction; for a one-week period beginning September 1, there will be little data returned (although if past years are any guide to the present, Cassini's radio science team will actually be using the the spacecraft's radio dish to probe the solar corona by broadcasting through it to Earth)."

[peter59]

Eclipse of Rhea by the shadow of Saturn.
August 19, 2008.

[ugordan]

Eclipse of Rhea by the shadow of Saturn.

A colorized gif of the same sequence here (3 MB).

[remcook]

So much going on in this image...great stuff

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...fm?imageID=3208

[ugordan]

Pandora casts its shadow onto the F ring: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...iImageID=167790

[Ken90000]

That is a great catch.

I think we are in for a wonderful equinox season with many moon casting many shadows upon many rings!

[Hungry4info]

I think we are in for a wonderful equinox season with many moon casting many shadows upon many rings!

And other moons!

I'm really glad they extended the mission.

[Stu]

This is just a ridiculously stunning image...

Mimas plus rings shadow