Printable Version of Topic

Posted by: DrShank Oct 16 2009, 03:50 AM

No this is not faked! I put it together from a set of departure images. only about 10% or so involved use of a duplicate
image to fill a gap. It took a lot of heavy processing to suppress Neptune glare, which caused some of the spots to go oversaturated and some of the finer ring detail to wash out but its still a pretty pic. I dont think Triton was in the vicinity at the time, which would have been a real kicker.

I made this in 1993 and its been lurking in my digital files ever since. its a wonder it didnt "disappear" with all the OS and platform changes since then.

Posted by: Juramike Oct 16 2009, 03:59 AM

Wow! That's beautiful!!

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Oct 16 2009, 04:22 AM

I'm speechless.

Posted by: nprev Oct 16 2009, 04:47 AM

<thunk!!!>

Posted by: Stu Oct 16 2009, 06:42 AM

Wow! That's beautiful. How come we've never seen that before?! That should have been in every astronomy book written - and every Outreach talk I've given - since you made it!

Posted by: ustrax Oct 16 2009, 11:19 AM

Doctor...I just love when you emerge...
Awesome work Paul!

Posted by: Bjorn Jonsson Oct 16 2009, 02:00 PM

Wow!! I didn't have even the faintest idea the Voyager 2 dataset contained images making a mosaic like this one possible. Almost looks like a completely new planet to me ;-).

Posted by: tedstryk Oct 16 2009, 03:14 PM

Beautiful! Brilliant processing. As someone who has looked at those images before, I can attest to how difficult they are to clean.

Posted by: scalbers Oct 16 2009, 04:10 PM

Very pretty Dr. Shank - like a second Saturn lurking in the outer solar system. Here's an example of the "original" imagery that I recall:

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA02224.jpg

I think some of the ring arcs were missed as the left and right (unshown) sides were taken at different times. Guess we'll need a new mission to address that?

Posted by: dilo Oct 16 2009, 04:13 PM

I am amazed too, Paul! Can you pls give us further detail on such picture (original images, filters and so on...)?
This is a very faive processing, done in order to remove some noise/dither and improve contrast. I slightly enhanced colors and, in fact, rings are reddish and planet blue!

Posted by: DrShank Oct 16 2009, 04:19 PM

color is artificial and not true in this mosaic. no color filters were used. As far as the ring arcs, they had rotated out of view each time an image was taken, which was a span of several hours!

Posted by: António Peres Oct 17 2009, 09:35 PM

I'm speechless too... AMAZING image

Posted by: Hungry4info Oct 17 2009, 10:29 PM

Wow. That's beautiful!

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Oct 17 2009, 11:29 PM

I started working on it too but realized that the inner ring is so close in image depth to the noise that its nearly impossible to remove one while keeping the other (without sectioning the image and adding artistic license) so I realized that's why Paul left it the way it was.

Posted by: brellis Oct 18 2009, 06:03 AM

wow, looking at the noise in the orig's, what a piece of work, done in '93? That's ShamWow!

Posted by: nprev Oct 18 2009, 08:29 AM

Got a question: Are Neptune's rings equatorial? Reason I ask is after looking at the image again it looks like one of the polar areas is sunlit & the other isn't, like Uranus. Neptune's axial tilt is around 28 deg, so I'm betting that this is a viewing geometry thing...but can't quite figure it out.

Posted by: tasp Oct 18 2009, 12:43 PM

Yes they are pretty much equatorial, however, Joseph Burns has noted there is some inclination in the outer edge, apparently related to the effects of the inclined orbit of Triton.

Posted by: DrShank Oct 18 2009, 03:34 PM

Voyager 2 went right over the north pole so on its way out it took a southward plunge. you are looking at the south pole from behind. Something like some of the Cassini views of saturn.