[X] My Assistant

[jasedm]

Great orbit coming up.......
Titan on 7th September, followed on the 9th, by Enceladus from ~ 40,000km (not a great phase angle though) Any coverage will overlap that of the best Voyager 2 mosaic (Sarandib Planitia etc) but in much better detail.
Also, Cassini passes less than 12,000km from Methone later on that day (closest approach in the whole mission) - really hope the mission planners managed to retarget some frames to image the little blighter on this orbit.

Can't wait!!

[jasedm]

Shame about Methone - Cassini barrels past just a couple of Titan-diameters away.
Still, another opportunity comes up next June I believe to capture some pics of her at a similar range.

[volcanopele]

Shame about Methone - Cassini barrels past just a couple of Titan-diameters away.
Still, another opportunity comes up next June I believe to capture some pics of her at a similar range.

Do you happen to know the phase angle of that encounter? Such an encounter would be best for shape determination. Even at 15,000 km, Methone would only be about 33 pixels across.

[jasedm]

Do you happen to know the phase angle of that encounter? Such an encounter would be best for shape determination. Even at 15,000 km, Methone would only be about 33 pixels across.

Not sure where to post this, so have plumped for this thread as it mentions shape-determination issues for Methone.
A few interesting images of this tiny moon have just been posted on the raw images pages, but they are more than just basic opnavs, as it appears that the moon's orbit has now been determined sufficiently-well to allow the frames to be fairly long exposure ones, tracking the moon in it's orbit, and consequently show a discernible disc.
Does anybody know the exposure times, distance from the moon (9th March was the date quoted, so distance must be in the region of 1.2million km), and Methone's diameter (I've seen figures varying from 1.6km to 4km quoted)
The frames are here,and and here
Maybe the range is still too distant, but it appears on this evidence that Methone is at least roughly spherical.

[ugordan]

Maybe the range is still too distant, but it appears on this evidence that Methone is at least roughly spherical.

I don't think you can say that with much confidence when looking at the two images. The moon was obviously unresolved and the circular impression you get is the camera's point spread function at work. It looks like Methone was overexposed in the images as well.