Pale Blue Dot, Cassini takes a look back at Earth Options

[ugordan]

As part of the day to celebrate the Pale Blue Dot, the first raw images have come down, but are not listed on the raw page yet. There are 3 RGB sets of both NAC and WAC images with varying exposure settings. Here's a combined WAC view utilizing all 3 sets to cut down on JPEG artifacts:



The NAC shots unfortunately appear to all be overexposed to some degree.

[wildespace]

Stunning image!! Here's my own RGB composite, using simple stacking and a bit of cleaning up.


I'll see what I can do with other images, but http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/ seems to have very busy traffic right now.

[ngunn]

Very nice! No sign of our Moon this time though. Is it very closely aligned with Earth from this perspective?

[ugordan]

The Moon is visible in the narrow-angle shots and it should be detectable in the original wide-angle raw data as well. My guess is it's just drowned out in JPEG artifacts in the raws posted on the web. It should be around 2 pixels to the right of Earth in this image orientation.

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[Graham]

Hi - pulled this from JPL
Earth & Moon

[Graham]

Try this

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[bkellysky]

Did they overexpose our planet?
Must have been all the waving! http://www.skyandtelescope.com/news/home/W...ni-See-You.html

Thanks, folks, for the advance peek!

[wildespace]

A much better version of my image: http://www.pictureshack.us/images/25119_earth2.jpg



In the previous image, I aligned the raw images centered on Earth, which left Saturn's rings slightly misaligned (this is due to Cassini travelling some distance between taking the shots). Here, I made the rings align more or less perfectly (resulting in a much more natural colour), and "pasted" the Earth from the previous image.

Had I known my image would be so popular on Facebook, I'd have waited and posted this one.

[ElkGroveDan]

Speaking of Facebook, the version of the image posted on the Cassini Facebook page (attached) has an exceedingly obvious blue blob. If I didn't know better I'd think that maybe someone tweaked that portion of the photo or cut and pasted Earth from some other image (but what do I know?)

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[brellis]

Is the sun visible under the edge of Saturn?

[wildespace]

Speaking of Facebook, the version of the image posted on the Cassini Facebook page (attached) has an exceedingly obvious blue blob. If I didn't know better I'd think that maybe someone tweaked that portion of the photo or cut and pasted Earth from some other image (but what do I know?)

What happened is that they used several frames with different exposures. The rings are from the frames with short exposure, the Earth and the lower half of the image is from the frames with longer exposure (which also show the faint outer rings of Saturn). I did the same thing here, in my third version of the image: http://www.pictureshack.us/images/39820_earth3.jpg



Here's an example of the frames used:
Short exposure - http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/rawi...?imageID=295022
Long exposure - http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/raw/rawi...?imageID=295016

Is the sun visible under the edge of Saturn?

No, the Sun was hidden behind Saturn, which is why Cassini was able to take a picture of Earth in the first place. From Saturn's position, Earth appears quite close to the Sun, and there's a risk of hurting Cassini's optics and instruments if pointed that way - unless the Sun is eclipsed by Saturn.

[ugordan]

The whole mosaic has now been officially released: http://www.ciclops.org/view/7699/The-Day-the-Earth-Smiled

Very impressive. Dare I say, better than the first eclipse shot?

[Explorer1]

So many stars and little moons! You can hardly tell which is ours. Enceladus geysers, stars, rings, Earth, etc.
One of those 'spend hours looking and see new details' deals like the Jupiter flyby mosaic...
Fantastic work!

(New Captain's Log at ciclops.org)

[Astro0]

Now THAT's beautiful. They are truly image processing wizards at Ciclops.