[X] My Assistant

[TritonAntares]

Hi,
as june begins, time to open this thread...

As said before there will be another Iapetus campaign in the second half of this month - from 17th until 27th.
Unfortunately the minimum distance will only be around 1,3 mio. km, resolution about 8,1 pxl/km.

Also the short Celestia-animation again:
 Iapetus_june_2006.avi.html ( 373K ) Number of downloads: 817

Just remove *.html and run the avi-file preferably on a DIVX-player.

Bye.

[Rob Pinnegar]

This seems to be just about "it" for Iapetus encounters until the targeted flyby in September of next year. Cassini will get within a couple of million kilometres of Iapetus a few more times before then, but we won't really be seeing anything new, or closer views of things already seen, on those occasions.

[TritonAntares]

This seems to be just about "it" for Iapetus encounters until the targeted flyby in September of next year.
Cassini will get within a couple of million kilometres of Iapetus a few more times before then,
but we won't really be seeing anything new, or closer views of things already seen, on those occasions.

Here a collection of Iapetus far-encounters I found until September 2007 using Solar System Viewer:
2006-09-03 / 1.816.000 km:

~11 km/pxl; sub-Saturn
Iapetus as we are used to observe it.

2006-09-15 / 2.288.000 km:


~13 km/pxl; Moat/Snowman in center
Interesting sight, hopefully some OPNAVs!

2006-11-27 / 1.997.000 km:

~12 km/pxl; very low phase, sub-Saturn
And again the same Iapetus regions...

2006-12-11 / 2.699.000 km:

~16 km/pxl; half phase, rim of eastern CR at terminator
All known territory, distance too far...

2007-01-18 / 2.565.000 km:

~15 km/pxl; cresent, Moat/Snowman at terminator
Quite interesting view, but probably too far away.

2007-02-14 / 2.249.000 km:


~13,5 km/pxl; sub-Saturn
Once again Iapetus as we are used to observe it.

2007-03-25 / 2.614.000 km:

~15,5 km/pxl; sub-Saturn
Iapetus in the dark, maybe some limb topogaphics visible.

2007-04-15 / 2.256.000 km:

~13,5 km/pxl; Moat/Snowman and northern hemisphere
Interesting perspective of some badly known regions, but quite far away...

2007-06-22 / 1.817.000 km:

~11 km/pxl; sub-Saturn
Iapetus in the dark again, maybe some limb topogaphics visible.

2007-07-05 / 2.281.000 km:

~14 km/pxl; Moat/Snowman and unknown southern giant bassin
For sure the most interesting perspective, sadly only 2 months before the fly-by.

Even though all these encounters are between 1,8 and 2,7 mio km, there are some perspectives we haven't seen so far.
I'm curious about which opportunities will be taken to look again at this saturnian moon?!

Bye.