The unlit side of the rings |
The unlit side of the rings |
Jul 27 2006, 10:56 AM
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IMG to PNG GOD Group: Moderator Posts: 2250 Joined: 19-February 04 From: Near fire and ice Member No.: 38 |
Cassini has previously imaged the unlit side of the rings but now it is doing extensive observations of the unlit side. For the first time in its mission Cassini is spending a significant amount of time north of the ringplane - earlier it has done so only near periapsis but this orbit is different.
This is a quick RGB composite I did from wide angle images: I made no attempts to correct the color - this is probably not very far from the true color of the rings. Large color variations are apparent, the C ring and the Cassini division appear much more bluish than the thicker rings (A and B ). It should be noted that these images were very probably downliked with the 12 -> 8 bit encoding which basically means that dark areas appear too bright in this image because I did not correct for this. It's also interesting to compare this image to Voyager images: Voyager 1: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA02241 Voyager 2: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01955 Voyager 2: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA01389 |
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Jul 27 2006, 01:41 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 903 Joined: 30-January 05 Member No.: 162 |
I recall viewing pictures sent back by Pioneer 11 showing the unlit side of the rings.
It had never occured to me the sun only shown on one side at a time and it was pretty confusing. I would like to think my general level of comprehension of this stuff has improved a bit . . . . |
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