Rev 153 - Sep 3-22, 2011 - Titan T78, Also Pallene, Tethys, Enceladus, and Hyperion Options

[Floyd]

From Looking Ahead: Rev153: Sep 3 - Sep 22 '11

A lot going on this revolution:

Sixty-one ISS observations are planned for Rev153, the majority designed to monitor cloud systems in Saturn's atmosphere. The spacecraft also will encounter a number of Saturn's moons, including Titan, Pallene, Tethys, Enceladus, and Hyperion, for which ISS will acquiring imaging.

ISS will image the L5 Lagrange point (60 degrees behind satellite) regions of the moons Iapetus, Rhea and Dione to see if they have Trojan’s like Dione/Polydeuces and Tethys/Calypso.

Titan encounter Sept 12. CIRS, VIMS, UVIS, INMS, CAPS, ISS
Imaging Enceladus polar plume from night side at 42,224 km and two mosaics of sub-Saturn hemisphere. Sept 13
Imaging Tethys from 300,00 km Sept 13
Image Pallene from 25,960 km (38x26 pixels at that distance as only 3.6 x 2.5 miles) Sept 13
Image Hyperion from 58,015 km—a little further than last month. Sept 16.
Color image of Tethys passing in front of Titan's south polar hazes. Sep 16.
Mutual events Enceladus in front of Titan with Rings and Pandora in background Sept 17.

[Juramike]

Saw these images come down of a starfield as taken from Saturn orbit, and well, started treating it as "the ultimate puzzle", and put together this 12-frame mosaic:

[Toma B]

My God, it's full of stars!

[Decepticon]

Very funny!

[JTN]

Here's what astrometry.net makes of it (I won't quote details so as not to spoil it for puzzle fans )
(NB the service is advertised as experimental, so this link may rot.)

[Floyd]

From Looking Ahead Rev 153:
ISS begins its observations for Rev153 two days after apoapse with a satellite search observation. ISS will image the L5 Lagrange point region of the moon Iapetus, about 60 degrees behind of the icy satellite in its orbit. This type of Lagrange point has been found to host Trojan moons before in the Saturn system. Cassini discovered the L5 Trojan moon of Dione now named Polydeuces in 2004. Another, Calypso, shares the same orbit as Tethys but lies 60 degrees behind it. This satellite search observation could detect objects as small as 90 meters near Iapetus' L5 point. Similar observations will be acquired of the L5 regions for Rhea and Dione on September 21 and 22, respectively.

What would be great is if someone made the images into a slow movie to see if any faint slowly moving object can be seen

Lots of good things to see in Rev153 (from thread I started a few days back)
Sixty-one ISS observations are planned for Rev153, the majority designed to monitor cloud systems in Saturn's atmosphere. The spacecraft also will encounter a number of Saturn's moons, including Titan, Pallene, Tethys, Enceladus, and Hyperion, for which ISS will acquiring imaging.

ISS will image the L5 Lagrange point (60 degrees behind satellite) regions of the moons Iapetus, Rhea and Dione to see if they have Trojan’s like Dione/Polydeuces and Tethys/Calypso.

Titan encounter Sept 12. CIRS, VIMS, UVIS, INMS, CAPS, ISS

Imaging Enceladus polar plume from night side at 42,224 km and two mosaics of sub-Saturn hemisphere. Sept 13
Imaging Tethys from 300,00 km Sept 13
Image Pallene from 25,960 km (38x26 pixels at that distance as only 3.6 x 2.5 miles) Sept 13
Image Hyperion from 58,015 km—a little further than last month. Sept 16.
Color image of Tethys passing in front of Titan's south polar hazes. Sep 16.
Mutual events Enceladus in front of Titan with Rings and Pandora in background Sept 17.

[Juramike]

Here's what astrometry.net makes of it (I won't quote details so as not to spoil it for puzzle fans )
(NB the service is advertised as experimental, so this link may rot.)

Ah! Thanks for that! I submitted it and a cropped version to the astronomy.net flickr bot but didn't get a response.

[Juramike]

Paaliaq the Pixel! Four frame animation crated from an image sequence taken on September 8:

[titanicrivers]

Nice montage Mike and impressive ID by Astrometry. I was wondering where the apparent orbit of Iapetus might be projected on the star field imaged especially the portion 60 degrees behind the position of Iapetus in its orbit. A rough estimate using the Solar System Simulator is given below. The starfield montage is rotated 180 degrees in this depiction. The second image is an approximate orbit projected on a higher resolution version of the starfield ... perhaps a region to concentrate on in blink compare or video constructs to see a moving body

[ugordan]

Titan on September 9, CB3/GRN/UV3 plus some "artistic freedom" in processing:

[ugordan]

Some lovely shots of Titan's south pole are available. NAC RGB view from 116 000 km:



I wonder if the star visible is Chi Aquarii mentioned in the Looking Ahead article.

[Stu]

Absolutely beautiful...

[remcook]

Wow, that detached haze layer is doing some funky stuff near the pole. There are some more close ups as well.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...0/W00070005.jpg

[ugordan]

Here's the WAC companion to that NAC shot, south is up:



I don't know. It used to look like a shadow of the optically thick haze on the detached layer before. Now it kind of depends on which filter you look at. It still looks like an ordinary shadow to me in the above color composite. Overall, it looks like the haze is thicker at the pole compared to other spots at the limb so maybe it pronounces this effect.

One reason I think it's a shadow is there's a slight hue shift toward orange in that haze "crack" as seen in the NAC view as sunlight passes through the orange haze layers before it sets.

[ngunn]

I think there could be diurnal changes in the upper haze layer. Of course we only see the illuminated part, but suppose the haze gets more opaque when night's shadow falls. We might see the denser night haze briefly when early morning sunlight first reaches it. This would be most evident at the polar limb.