[X] My Assistant

[Decepticon]

Another flyby coming soon. Interesting observations include radar swath of Huygens landing site.

Just before CA. http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?t...porbs=1&brite=1

From above... http://space.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/wspace?t...porbs=1&brite=1

I really missed VP encounter updates So I tried my best at showing the Hemisphere to be imaged during the flyby.

[RPascal]

Mosaic North-direction

During my last attempts to find possible positions for the Huygens mosaic within the Cassini images for the upcoming flyby, I realized that the information regarding the correct north-direction was perhaps hidden in one of my early panoramas all the time, but I did not realize it...
The slightly brighter horizon around the images 476, 400, 526, 446, 380, 455 of the panorama "Huygens distant view" (blue arrow) marks the direction opposite to the sun! Backscatter in the atmosphere results in a brightening of the haze around that point. I do not think that it is an artifact, since it can also be well seen as an inclined horizon brightness when looking at the SLI raw images, the
numbers 476, 455 and 400 for instance.
With the information where Huygens approximately was when shooting the corresponding images (green ellipse) the sun direction can be determined with an uncertainty of perhaps +-3 degrees (the two red lines in the upper left). The resulting rotational orientation (north direction) very well fits the new orientation reported recently, by Larry Soderblom for instance.
And I did not see it...




http://www.beugungsbild.de/huygens/huygens_distant_view.html