Exquisite Saturn Images Options

[Stu]

This image of Mimas is just ridiculously cool...

[ugordan]

Sweet!

[ngunn]

Very nice. Are you planning something with the narrow angle views too?

[ugordan]

Yep, it was lunchtime so I didn't have the time.

Here it is, Saturn's limb is verging on overexposure:


I like the contrast between the Rayleigh-scattering-blue limb of Saturn and the orange haze of Titan in this shot. They ought to be planning more scenic views such as this, AFAIK this is something like only the 4th time Titan and Saturn were visible in a single shot and were taken in RGB.

We should be getting at least one more view of this on Titan's egress on the other side, in fact it's supposed to have been taken already.

[ngunn]

Excellent - though I prefer that one rotated 180.

[climber]

Waves : http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...7/N00100599.jpg

[elakdawalla]

AFAIK this is something like only the 4th time Titan and Saturn were visible in a single shot and were taken in RGB.

Okay, that just begged for me to put together a query for Bjorn's database. I asked it to return all the distinct OBSERVATION_IDs for which both SATURN and TITAN were in the TARGET_LIST field and for which there were RED filter images from either camera, the red filter being the one that seems to be least used except when there are full filter sets taken. Here's the list. The first four are during cruise, with Saturn looking very pretty in the NA field of view but Titan only a speck.
ISS_C34IC_SATURN001_PRIME
ISS_C39IC_COMPCHECK001_PRIME
ISS_C40_Trigger_921
ISS_C40IC_COMPCHECK001_PRIME
NAV_00BSK_OPNAV372_PRIME
ISS_005TI_FIRLMBT002_CIRS
ISS_00ASA_AURORAA001_UVIS
ISS_019TI_HDAC001_UVIS

Nice images, Gordan!

Emily

[ugordan]

Here are the outbound shots that got delayed a bit:



That's Tethys hanging there, overexposed.

[tedstryk]

Beautiful work!

[ugordan]

A (rare) color shot of the southern hemisphere at low phase:



Reminiscent of this old one.

[elakdawalla]

I was noodling around in the PDS data and I came across a quite amazing set of images that I hadn't noticed before: 20 RED-GRN-BL1 triplets containing a crescent Rhea crossing in front of a crescent Saturn from nearly in the ring plane. Below are the RED thumbnails from the beginning and end of the animation. Has anybody built this three-color animation? It would be really dramatic -- I'll take a stab at it if no one else does, but don't want to duplicate anyone else's work. The observation is ISS_022RH_PHOTOOPPS001_PRIME, and you can quickly get to PNGified versions of all the pics here.





--Emily

[ugordan]

Has anybody built this three-color animation?

Yes, CICLOPS has made a video of that: Rhea Occults Saturn, although they mixed in some motion interpolation of which I'm not personally very fond of.

[elakdawalla]

Neat. Thanks. I like how Saturn's southern nightside is faintly lit by ringshine.

--Emily

[ugordan]

If you're eager to take a whack at animating frames, there's a load of Saturn approach color stuff waiting to be animated.
It's reminiscent of the famous Voyager Jupiter approach sequence, only in color and with less frames. Here's just a couple of rough frames to show what's lying in there:
 sat_approach.avi ( 666.31K ) Number of downloads: 450
(DivX 5 needed)

[ugordan]

A bit of stormy weather on Saturn, some unsharp masking applied to enhance the clouds: