Grand Finale part 1, F ring orbits Options

[Ian R]

This is my attempt at animating the nine CB3 frames taken on the 21st:

http://imgur.com/a/MqRLr

[titanicrivers]

Neat! Looks like a living and breathing world!

[Ian R]

Latest shots of ATLAS, fresh off the press!

[jasedm]

You beat me to it Ian, I've been checking back on the raws for the last couple of hours...

Fantastic!

12 images of the planned 56 missing so far - hopefully these are at closer range, and they managed to snag at least a part of Atlas at higher resolution in them. It looks like the little moonlet was beginning to drift out of the F.O.V though...

No impact craters at all visible at this range, in contrast to the Daphnis images a couple of weeks ago.

I think this this is the last decent-range moon-encounter in the mission (excepting Titan on April 22nd) the remainder of the mission being dedicated to rings, gravity and atmosphere.

What a ride!

[Explorer1]

Bizarre, but so cool! The ridge almost dwarfs the rest of the moon! Would it be a ultrafine powder, or have somehow solidified? No craters...

[Hungry4info]

Any idea what those markings are along the equator, at the top of the ridge? Clumps of material sitting on the surface? harder material peeking out?

[fredk]

Very quick and dirty (ie, poorly aligned) stereo views. Anaglyph:

And cross-eyed:

[wildespace]

New Atlas shots are amazing. But, unexpectedly, so are these Saturn shots, using RED filter, that reveal some very intricate cloud details.

Microsoft ICE mosaics:







To my knowledge, nothing like that (meaning resolution and detail) has ever been seen on Saturn before. This is uncannily similar to the CGI view in that recent video about Cassini's last mission:





P.S. Are these shots actually of the polar regions? That would explain the swirls, similar to what we've seen from JunoCam on Jupiter.

This quick RGB stack really looks like a polar region (bluish hues):

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[wildespace]

No impact craters at all visible at this range, in contrast to the Daphnis images a couple of weeks ago.

To me, it looks like static electricity is responsible for some of that icy dust from the equatorial ridge coating the rest of the moon and hiding what little craters it might have.

Perhaps someone can create enlargements and deconvolutions that will reveal more surface detail.

BTW, here's my very imperfect stack from CB3, CB1, and GRN images:

[t_oner]

I guess sampling is not enough for a better interpolation. May be manual methods would give a better result.

Attached File(s)

 atlas.mp4 ( 879.16K ) Number of downloads: 447

 

[nprev]

Gotta wonder if every so often a decent impact rocks these little guys enough to shake off the dust toruses, which then slowly reform.

[PDP8E]

Here is a GIF of Atlas, based in a raw image from the NASA site.
It seems to be a very uniform (low freq) moon in the image
It is lightly deconvolved

[jasedm]

View of the unlit side of the rings during the last periapse....Dozens of propellers!



I think the unofficial naming convention for aviation pioneers will quickly be exhausted....

[jasedm]

And for comparison, a raw of 'Bleriot' one of the larger propellers, imaged on April 12th:

[Phil Stooke]

"I think the unofficial naming convention for aviation pioneers will quickly be exhausted...."

Yes, we'll be down to the cabin staff soon.

Phil