T72 Flyby Options

[titanicrivers]

Some of those cool Sept 21 images are increasing my anticipation of the T72 flyby (due to happen in about 17 hrs)!

[titanicrivers]

Some T72 Titan flyby raw images have come down! Nice outbound views of Adiri taken by the WAC. An example, W0065713 (blended with the SSS image at same distance) appears below.

[Vultur]

Cool image.

I wonder if the vaguely meteor-looking streak in this image (from here) is just a data dropout or might be something more interesting? Other images have what looks like dropouts, so it probably is...

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[volcanopele]

Cosmic ray hit on the CCD.

[ugordan]

Yeah, data dropouts are always aligned horizontally and usually black, not bright.

[Vultur]

Cosmic ray hit on the CCD.

Ah, thanks.

[titanicrivers]

Outbound WAC view of Adiri (W00065688) maps well onto the SSS Titan view from Cassini at 42K km. (HLS is approx location of Huygen's landing site)

[remcook]

This seems interesting
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/rawi...?imageID=228405
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/rawi...?imageID=228413
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/rawi...?imageID=228412

That's some weird-looking cloud!

[ugordan]

That's some weird-looking cloud!

That's putting it mildly!

Stack of 3 CB3 frames:


Could we be looking at an eruption or even impact event here??? A CB2 frame later shows the formation to pretty much show no evolution, except a slight hint of change in the "upward" cloud tongue, but probably due to raw jpeg compression, lower atmospheric transparency and 1/2 resolution.

[titanicrivers]

Looks like another big equatorial storm cloud over Senkyo!

[remcook]

As the winds are supposed to be eastwards through most of the troposphere, these cloud streaks seem to be converging, not diverging, which doesn't make much sense to me.

edit- the range of latitudes covered by these streaks is also very abnormal. The two outer streaks are almost (well...) in north-south direction!

[Juramike]

The center of the cloud is located over S Senkyo, very near where there is an strangely interesting dark splot in the ISS [-23 S, 335 W].

I'm just sayin'....

[ugordan]

Whatever it is, it appears to be well inside the haze as it's only visible in longer wavelength filters. There were other cloud outbursts that were visible in the red filter so from that standpoint it's not entirely unusual. It's the shape of the cloud that has me completely baffled.

Good thing Saturn is entering conjunction now...

A not particularly good RGB combo where it's also detectable:


Notice the cloud is centered near the global dark band edge. Could the circulation pattern in different "hemispheres" explain for multiple streaks, one carrying stuff to the north and other to the south? Notice also that there are hints (CB3 frames) of two small clouds east of this one, both have the more "normal" E-W streakish appearance.

[remcook]

... but then the flow would have to be westward! Might be some strange instability or something, but I'm a bit surprised by it.

-edit: I guess the higher latitudes could have slower velocities than the equator somehow.

It seems to be tropospheric only indeed. Some faint patch at high latitudes in the stratosphere (MT2 and MT3), but probably unrelated I would think.

[titanicrivers]

Whatever it is, it appears to be well inside the haze as it's only visible in longer wavelength filters. There were other cloud outbursts that were visible in the red filter so from that standpoint it's not entirely unusual. It's the shape of the cloud that has me completely baffled.

?Could this be the early propagation of Rossby waves that may have produced clouds at different latitudes in the April 2008 S. Belet storm imaged by Gemini N by Shaller, Roe and Brown?