Helene from distance ~7000 km. Date 18.6.2011. Red, green a blue (BL1) filter. Resolution is ~42 m/pix.
EDIT: I uploaded new version of the image without three prominent specks of noise.
Beautiful - people, it really repays enlarging it and panning around that amazing surface.
Phil
Regarding the term "panning" Phil, I can't enlarge it enough for panning because the whole image still fits comfortably on my screen.
Did you download a more detailed version from a different location? No complaints; I just want to be sure I am successfully following your suggestion.
What I can see at the present resolution is indeed fascinating in both its detailed dust effects and in the macro resemblance to a really spooky skull.
I downloaded this and opened it in Photoshop, enlarged the view and moved around within it. Any other image viewer would do. I often find that merely enlarging a file by two or three times lets me see much more in it without any processing.
Phil
Wonderful!!!
And what a bizarre little world...
Great shot, Daniel (BTW, north is down in this view).
To pan and zoom this image without opening any software, you can use the zoom.it website:
http://zoom.it/LdNG
Oh now that is a very cool tool. The original image is only 1000 pixels across, much smaller than my screen. But somehow, when I zoom, I notice features that I did not notice when it was at "actual size." Like: there are not very many craters visible, but each one seems to be modified in a different way, depending on where it was located and (presumably) how old it is.
Maybe print a b/w version (on regular paper, not photo sock) and see if the kidlings want to color one for us to see?
Ooooh! Now I want a pair of Helene photo socks for Christmas!
"Beautiful"
"Wonderful!!!"
"Great shot"
Thanks!
absolutely beautiful! thanks for posting this.
My firdt reaction is "Wow!". A moment later it was "Huh? What the....?"
will be most interested to hear what the science folk have to say about this. Is it a flying rubble pile? Or would "flying dust pile" be closer to the truth?
An older harder crust that is being stripped away does look like the best explanation for this. If the crust lies over loose regolith, that might allow downslope movement to undermine the crusty patches and gradually eat away at them. But why do we have a crust like this? The surface of Calypso may be similar.
One of the big puzzles with these small moons is why they are so different. Janus and Epimetheus seem to have patches of dark smooth material in depressions. Helene and maybe Calypso have extensive evidence of downslope movement like this. Hyperion is incredibly rough, Telesto very smooth.
Phil
As machi's great color composite reveals, Helene's color is pretty bland in visible light. Color differences are somewhat more pronounced if IR3-GRN-UV3 is used as RGB. Here is an enhanced IR3-GRN-UV3 composite; color differences become obvious by greatly increasing the color saturation:
LSD Helene!
OK, this is just fooling around, it doesn't mean anything, but an eyecatching view anyway. What would the great mountain ranges of Helene look like from a viewpoint on the opposite side of the valley?
Phil
Ski Helene!
Mt. St. Helene?
Just for fun: Assuming a free-fall drop of 2 km and using Helene’s gravity figure below (1/5000th that of Earth’s), ballpark figures for your skier’s terminal velocity speed would be less than 10 km/h after a 20 minute run-out
http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cfm?Object=Sat_Helene&Display=Facts&System=Metric
That's my kinda skiing! Slow and steady.
Phil
Final product of my efforts.
Animation of the Cassini's flyby of Helene:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ZnhShPwlvM
More http://my-favourite-universe.blogspot.com/2012/05/bozska-helene.html.
http://my-favourite-universe.blogspot.com/2012/05/bozska-helene.html
Fan-TASTIC, Daniel!!!!
Oh my goodness, that is unbelievable.
Great work. And in way I'm even more impressed by the enhanced color composite than the movie since it can be extremely difficult to perfectly align the color channels for closeups of an irregular, small target like Helene.
Simply beautiful. Great work, Machi!
Not as good as machi's but still something...
Created a partial shapemodel and used it to register images and create a surface map.
http://youtu.be/_thh_oXgQoc
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