Rev166: May 11th - May 28th 2012, Tethys, Methone, Titan |
Unmanned Spaceflight.com > Outer Solar System > Saturn > Cassini Huygens > Cassini's ongoing mission and raw images  |
Rev166: May 11th - May 28th 2012, Tethys, Methone, Titan |
 May 21 2012, 06:40 PM
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#16
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 Member  Group: Members Posts: 655 Joined: 22-January 06 Member No.: 655  |
Methone is very reminiscent of Pallene - peanut-shaped and very smooth. Interesting.
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May 21 2012, 08:53 PM
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#17
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 Lord Of The Uranian Rings Group: Members Posts: 798 Joined: 18-July 05 From: Plymouth, UK Member No.: 437 |
My attempt at an enhanced, IR-GRN-UV view:
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May 21 2012, 10:03 PM
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#18
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 Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3516 Joined: 4-November 05 From: North Wales Member No.: 542 |
That's interesting. The smooth shape says it's a snowdrift with a young surface, but the albedo differences can't be accounted for that way. How would the lighter and darker patches perpetuate themselves? Maybe there's a postive feedback loop (like Iapetus) that is sufficiently vigorous to keep up with the 'snowfall'.
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May 21 2012, 10:19 PM
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#19
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Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 95 Joined: 5-September 07 Member No.: 3662 |
QUOTE (machi @ May 21 2012, 11:59 AM)  Wow! This must be the biggest egg in the Universe!  I hope the Angry Birds Space people are paying attention.... Jeff |
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May 22 2012, 04:21 AM
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#20
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 Junior Member Group: Members Posts: 28 Joined: 17-April 08 From: Okemos, MI, USA Member No.: 4097 |
Submitted for your derision: my first attempt at processing Cassini data, an approach movie for Methone. The noise algorithm clearly needs some work...
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May 22 2012, 04:34 AM
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#21
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 Member Group: Members Posts: 903 Joined: 30-January 05 Member No.: 162 |
Would the presumed particles coating the surface (if it isn't that way all the way through) be charged and discharged by Saturn's magnetic field and 'sorted' somehow by size (or something) and that is making the albedo variations? Or maybe the particles are not spherical, and their orientation is aligned that way and that makes them look different in different regions.
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May 22 2012, 04:35 AM
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#22
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 Administrator Group: Admin Posts: 5172 Joined: 4-August 05 From: Pasadena, CA, USA, Earth Member No.: 454 |
Good job. I tried something similar, painting out the cosmic ray hits, but there were so many that I realized I wasn't so much painting things out as I was painting a picture of Methone, so I quit. I think it probably is better to leave them in, for now. Once we can get our hands on data that's not been JPEG-compressed, it'll be substantially easier to remove them.
-------------------- My website - My Patreon - @elakdawalla on Twitter - Please support unmannedspaceflight.com by donating here.
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May 22 2012, 05:19 AM
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#23
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Member Group: Members Posts: 540 Joined: 17-November 05 From: Oklahoma Member No.: 557 |
Very pleased indeed that they got these good shots of Methone.
Albedo variations?!? As usual, I had no idea what to expect. But whatever it was that I was not expecting, this wasn't it. |
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May 22 2012, 05:33 AM
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#24
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Administrator Group: Admin Posts: 5172 Joined: 4-August 05 From: Pasadena, CA, USA, Earth Member No.: 454 |
QUOTE (Holder of the Two Leashes @ May 21 2012, 10:19 PM) As usual, I had no idea what to expect. But whatever it was that I was not expecting, this wasn't it.  My sentiments exactly!-------------------- My website - My Patreon - @elakdawalla on Twitter - Please support unmannedspaceflight.com by donating here.
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May 22 2012, 06:18 AM
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#25
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 Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1729 Joined: 3-August 06 From: 43° 35' 53" N 1° 26' 35" E Member No.: 1004 |
I get the feeling that Methone is not unlike Atlas: it probably has a solid core and a smooth cover of ring dust, as dense as freshly fallen snow, filling its minuscule Roche "sphere of gravitational influence". don't forget that Methone has its own ringlet from which to collect dust. too bad we don't have a reliable estimate for its mass, otherwise it would be easy to compute the size of its sphere of influence. I bet it's of the order of 6 km across...
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May 24 2012, 01:42 AM
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#26
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Member Group: Members Posts: 699 Joined: 1-April 08 From: Minnesota ! Member No.: 4081 |
Fascinating object. Cometary size and incredible smoothness like some parts of comets visited by spacecraft in the last decade (see below). Could methone be a captured comet, its passage around the sun vaporizing the volatiles on/in its surface, smoothing its crust and perhaps passing too close to Saturn (in or outbound) and thus captured in its altered state???
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May 24 2012, 02:18 AM
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#27
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1582 Joined: 14-October 05 From: Vermont Member No.: 530 |
QUOTE (titanicrivers @ May 23 2012, 08:42 PM) Fascinating object. Cometary size and incredible smoothness like some parts of comets visited by spacecraft in the last decade (see below). Could methone be a captured comet, its passage around the sun vaporizing the volatiles on/in its surface, smoothing its crust and perhaps passing too close to Saturn (in or outbound) and thus captured in its altered state??? Lots of the other tiny moons might fit that description, and they're all basically pieces of the ring system, so it's unlikely they're a comet. The 2010 photos of Calypso are striking. Atlas, too. |
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May 24 2012, 02:19 AM
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#28
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 Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2082 Joined: 13-February 10 From: Ontario Member No.: 5221 |
What hemisphere are we looking at here, trailing or leading (or a combination of both)?
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May 24 2012, 07:31 AM
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#29
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1729 Joined: 3-August 06 From: 43° 35' 53" N 1° 26' 35" E Member No.: 1004 |
QUOTE (stevesliva @ May 24 2012, 04:18 AM) Lots of the other tiny moons might fit that description, and they're all basically pieces of the ring system, so it's unlikely they're a comet. The 2010 photos of Calypso are striking. Atlas, too. beside, a captured comet would likely end in a distant, irregular orbit. Methone is in a stable, almost circular orbit deep into the Saturnian system. and an object jumping from the former to the latter would be far more likely to crash on a large moon like Titan, Iapetus or Rhea than to reach the final orbit. |
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May 24 2012, 05:31 PM
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#30
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Member Group: Members Posts: 655 Joined: 22-January 06 Member No.: 655 |
In passing, a milestone of distance travelled for Cassini on this last revolution - see attached...
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