[X] My Assistant

[alan]

Solar system simulator shows an encouter under 500,000 km on June 6. Will there be a good view of the south pole on this pass?

[edstrick]

I grabbed the last of the Rev 009 Titan full frame pics with the best surface visibility from the raw images site and ran a couple bandpass-filter enhancements on it to bring out details.

Attached are 3 files, the original raw image, as usual with Titan, enough to make me want to clean my glasses.

The XXXX_e.jpg enhancement used a 81 pixel max filter size and an anlysis box covering the disk but not much of the limb to bring out fine scale disk details. Of course, it brings out in horrific detail the JPG artifacts in the online image, but not much I can do about that. These views will clearly provide the best overall view of Xanthe we've gotten so far. The "Smile" which is the southern boundary of the 5 micrometer wavelength redspot is clearly only a half circle, with no trace of continuity to the north (north is at about 55:00 clock angle).

The XXXX_e2.jpg image was enhanced with a 27 pixel max filter size and an analysis box including the entire limb. Much interesting detail is visible in limb haze layering. The north polar haze cap is beyond the limb at 5:00 clock angle, while a detached haze layer seems to be present from the equator (2:00 to 6:00) and somewhat north, but not at mid northern limb latitudes. This layer disappears at 1:00 and 7:00, though a sharp lower limb haze is visible at 7:00 which disappears at 8:00 clock angle. Further south, at 9:00 and 12:00 clock angles, a detached limb haze again becomes visible, and it TAPERS southward, becomming more visibly detached from the lower limb haze or whatever, disappearing in the 10:00 to 11:00 clock angle of the image at the southernmost latitudes.

Lot of structure in the limb hazes with latitude that will bear analysis.

Attached thumbnail(s)