New Iapetian image series Options

[TritonAntares]

Hi,
CASSINI has transmitted 184 pics (!) over the last days.
Here five takeouts, 3-4x enlargement:



Date: 2009-09-06
Distance: 2.228.548 km
Filters: CL1 and CL2


Date: 2009-09-08
Distance: 3.215.284 km
Filters: P120 and GRN


Date: 2009-09-08
Distance: 3.216.610 km
Filters: P60 and GRN


Date: 2009-09-09
Distance: 3.390.271km
Filters: P60 and GRN


Date: 2009-09-09
Distance: 3.427.313 km
Filters: P120 and GRN

Maybe somebody is able to combine some of those images to show more details.

Bye.

[Rob Pinnegar]

They certainly took enough images this time around. There must be at least a hundred new ones.

[Edit: oops, 184; didn't read the above post carefully the first time.]

[Rob Pinnegar]

At the end of November, Cassini will be a bit over two million kilometres from Iapetus. That hardly even qualifies as a "distant encounter" -- it's really just plain "distant".

Nonetheless, looking at the Solar System Simulator for dates around November 25th, any images taken around this time will probably be nice to look at, because they should show a bit more of the trailing, light-coloured part of the Saturn-facing hemisphere, Roncevaux Terra, than we have seen before. (Of course, we've seen some of it relatively close-up in Saturnshine during the New Year's 2005 distant flyby.) Cassini will be near apastron then, so there should be a bit of free time for taking pictures of Iapetus.

We haven't seen much of this part of Iapetus in previous Cassini images. My impression (correct me if I'm wrong) is that this is due to the geometry of Cassini's orbit around Saturn, up to the present time. Whenever Cassini is well placed to photograph the trailing side of Iapetus, it will normally also be very close to Saturn, which means that other things would naturally take priority over getting fuzzy pictures of a moon three million kilometres away.

[angel1801]

I just used the Solay System simulator and I have the following:

Date: November 27, 2006
Time: 00 hours (UT)
Distance: 2.008 million km

A full disk view of the Saturn facing hemisphere of Iapetus at 12km/pxl

I'm sure with multiple images and super ehancement, we can fill in a imaging gap of Iapetus
in the high northern latitudes at better than the 9km/pxl that Voyager 2 achived in 1981.

[TritonAntares]

Hi,
here what you're talking about:

Should give some more additional information about northern Roncevaux Terra as well as a nice view of the 'Snowman'.

Bye.

[Decepticon]

I can't wait to see that!

[CAP-Team]

[something went wrong here]

[CAP-Team]

I created the same image with Xplanet and Steve Albers' map:



As you can see, it doesn't really cover any lands we haven't seen before..

[Rob Pinnegar]

As you can see, it doesn't really cover any lands we haven't seen before..

Maybe not, but it will give us a chance to see some familiar territory from a different lighting angle. This will also be the case during the three remaining 2-million-kilometre flybys (around Feb 11th, Apr 15 and Jul 5) before the close-up view a year from now.

I think it's during the February encounter that we will see sunrise on "Snowman" over the course of several days -- instead of sunset, which has usually been the case. That should be of some significance for people who are interested in the "moat" (even though, at that distance, we'll hardly be able to see any detail).

[tedstryk]

I think that super-resolution processing may be needed to pull any nice looking images out of this. But that would have to wait for the PDS release (Stacking the "raw" jpegs will help compensate for compression artifacts, but does litttle else to improve resolution.

[ugordan]

2-million-kilometre flybys

Now that just sounds silly!

I think that super-resolution processing may be needed to pull any nice looking images out of this. But that would have to wait for the PDS

So in 12 months time or so we'll get to unleash our image processing skills on a few 2 million km distant frames... By that time the 1500 km flyby will be over and noone will even look back at these puny frames!

[TritonAntares]

Maybe not, but it will give us a chance to see some familiar territory from a different lighting angle.
This will also be the case during the three remaining 2-million-kilometre flybys (around Feb 11th, Apr 15 and Jul 5)
before the close-up view a year from now.

I think it's during the February encounter that we will see sunrise on "Snowman" over the course of several days
- instead of sunset, which has usually been the case.
That should be of some significance for people who are interested in the "moat"
(even though, at that distance, we'll hardly be able to see any detail).

The april and july far-encounters will show some other details in different lightning angle:

The later one will probably show some parts of the mostly unknown great southern bassin.

Bye.

[TritonAntares]

Hi again,
new release in the NASA/JPL image gallery - 'Duotone Moon':

Date: 2006-09-06
Distance: ~2.2 mio km
Resolution: 13 km/pxl

Bye.

[CAP-Team]

I used NASA's space simulator a lot in the past, but I think their maps aren't quite as good as Steve Albers' maps.



The view of July is finally giving us a view of unexplored terrain, just prior to the close encounter of september 2007.
Really looking forward to that.

[tedstryk]

As TritonAntares said, the key is that the illumination conditions will be different. This "flyby" may be useful for albedo mapping.