Rev198: Saturn wide-angle mosaic Options

[Astro0]

The official one is a bit disappointing. Some very bad joins, the F-ring is almost completely gone and the two small moons have disappeared.

[brellis]

thanks ugordan - my desktop is now complete!

[mcaplinger]

All these observations about the shortcomings of the official release (however accurate or otherwise) are, IMHO, violations of rule 2.6.

[tedstryk]

Suggesting that an official release image could have been done better or that another version is better I don't see how this fits into the prerequisite for 2.6, namely "When mentioning scientists, engineers, or other mission personnel..." - there is no such mention. If it turned into accusations of incompetence and such, I would see it differently, as that would be an implicit mention. That said, we should give it a rest, as points have been made and continuing on this route is, I would agree, in poor taste.

[Ian R]

Taking the thread on to less controversial ground, here are a couple of rings movies; the second in particular shows two, maybe three, ghostly 'blink-and-you'll-miss-them' spokes, plus the eccentric Huygens Ringlet stands out by virtue of its inherent 'wobble':

The Rotating Rings of Saturn (October 19, 2013)
http://www.youtube.com/v/42NRH-LNonQ&hd=1

The Elusive Spokes of Saturn (October 22, 2013)
http://www.youtube.com/v/O4wn81eI2lw&hd=1

[stephenv2]

Great stuff Ian - very nice work. How many frames per second are the masters of these?

Was thinking these might be really fun with some Phillip Glass type music.

[Ian R]

Thanks! All I did was tween the original 58 frame sequence from 8fps to 16fps.

[tanjent]

It is interesting that in addition to the hexagonal gray area very close to the pole, some of the other demarcation lines all the way out to the white cloud bank at about 30 degrees also appear to be composed of straight segments approximately equal in length. Certainly the gray hexagon is nested in a slightly offset brownish polygon; the others require more imagination. Excuse me if this is either trivially obvious or a patent hallucination.

[wildespace]

Cassini website has now a new area "Amateur Images", where your excellent mosaic is featured: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/amateurimages/
along with an image by yours truly (Titan)