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Posted by: titanicrivers May 5 2012, 04:42 AM

Rev 165 will feature the ‘movie stars’ of the Cassini mission Titan, Enceladus and Saturn. Described in Ciclops ‘Looking Ahead’ here http://www.ciclops.org/view/7190/Rev165 Cassini’s encounter with Titan and Saturn will be filmed with the WAC as a spectacular movie on the 6th of May during the distant Titan encounter. A sneak preview is provided below courtesy of the Solar System Simulator http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/. Should be awesome!
 Rev165moviestars.wmv ( 83.76K ) : 601

Posted by: volcanopele May 7 2012, 04:06 PM

I love it when a plan comes together.

Except the movie...sorry, I had those exposed for Saturn. Not sure why the summed frames were overexposed then. The NACs look good and the unsummed WACs look good. The WACs should provide some color frames for the enterprising folks here

Posted by: ugordan May 7 2012, 04:07 PM

Posted by: ugordan May 7 2012, 04:55 PM

And both snapshots merged to complete Saturn's disk:

Posted by: Hungry4info May 7 2012, 05:48 PM

Wow nice!

Posted by: tedstryk May 7 2012, 05:49 PM

Amazing!

Posted by: ugordan May 7 2012, 08:57 PM

An underwhelming NAC view, Saturn's limb was overexposed:

Posted by: Stu May 7 2012, 09:05 PM

As a kid I stood in my garden, peering into my little 3" reflector, ignoring the taunts and jeers of the rest of the neighbourhood kids as I marvelled at the sight of Titan shining close to Saturn, looking like a tiny star... Never thought I'd live to see the day when a close-up, colour portrait of Titan, one of the most enigmatic, mysterious, fascinating moons in the solar system, was described as "underwhelming"...!!!

(But I know what you mean... )

Posted by: ngunn May 7 2012, 10:05 PM

Here's my favourite raw image, Huygens landing site near centre stage and polar atmospheric goings-on in silhouette:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGFullS73/N00186662.jpg

Posted by: JohnVV May 8 2012, 03:39 AM

--edit---

Posted by: titanicrivers May 8 2012, 07:11 AM

Truly spectacular rendering and animation JohnVV ! (an academy award for sure !) Awesome WAC color composite Gordon. Might one be able to obtain a 3D stereo out of the WAC images?
Agree Nigel one of the most interesting views was that NAC view with Adiri and HLS with a Saturn atmospheric backdrop! I colorized that view below to bring out a little detail.

Posted by: remcook May 8 2012, 02:43 PM

Wow, some great shots!

Posted by: Juramike May 8 2012, 02:51 PM

Four-frame mosaic of Titan against Saturn's rings. Added a chunk of rings at lower left and a chunk of Saturn cloud deck at upper right.

Posted by: machi May 8 2012, 11:22 PM

Very nice images!

It's interesting, how well are layers in Titan's atmosphere visible against Saturn.

Posted by: titanicrivers May 10 2012, 02:59 AM

A Rev 165 parting NAC view of Titan shows Adiri well. There appears to be very little left of the post "Arrow Storm" white spots that persisted into 2011 and then faded. The figure shows the enhanced cropped view of Titan and Adiri from 5/7/2012 with 3 views of Adiri from 2011. The exact nature of the bright spots is still debated.... a runoff effect from methane rain on relative highlands of Adiri might explain the lack of initial dark changes seen elsewhere (in presumably lowland areas in Belet and Yalaing Terra). Bright avalanche effects can be seen in terrestial mountain chains after torrential rainstorms (the Adirondack mountains in NY contain such examples) perhaps analagous to the bright spots of Adiri.

Edit: An image depicting some landslides in the Adirondacks in 2011 is shown below






(MOD NOTE: Moved all posts after this one re Titan surface chemistry to http://www.unmannedspaceflight.com/index.php?showtopic=7320 created for that purpose.)