The unlit side of the rings |
The unlit side of the rings |
Jul 27 2006, 10:56 AM
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IMG to PNG GOD Group: Moderator Posts: 2250 Joined: 19-February 04 From: Near fire and ice Member No.: 38 |
Cassini has previously imaged the unlit side of the rings but now it is doing extensive observations of the unlit side. For the first time in its mission Cassini is spending a significant amount of time north of the ringplane - earlier it has done so only near periapsis but this orbit is different.
This is a quick RGB composite I did from wide angle images: I made no attempts to correct the color - this is probably not very far from the true color of the rings. Large color variations are apparent, the C ring and the Cassini division appear much more bluish than the thicker rings (A and B ). It should be noted that these images were very probably downliked with the 12 -> 8 bit encoding which basically means that dark areas appear too bright in this image because I did not correct for this. It's also interesting to compare this image to Voyager images: Voyager 1: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02241 Voyager 2: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01955 Voyager 2: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01389 |
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Jul 29 2006, 08:40 PM
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#2
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14431 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
Don't they use these sorts of obs for occultation measurements - VIMS I'd have thought would do well with it - or is there a large 'keep out' for instrument pointing around the sun.
Doug |
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Jul 29 2006, 09:12 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3648 Joined: 1-October 05 From: Croatia Member No.: 523 |
True, both VIMS and UVIS can stare at the sun. When these sorts of observations are planned precautions can be taken -- such as disabling the ISS subsystem. Accidental sun exposure could be dangerous to ISS cameras if they were in the middle of a planned imaging sequence and the shutter opened, allowing the sun to burn the CCDs.
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