Rev 61 Enceladus (March 12 2008) Options

[Holder of the Tw...]

The mission description PDF is now online.

Enceladus 3 Flyby

[jasedm]

Thanks for those spin0, and welcome.
It's useful to see the colour composites as they show the fresher ice more clearly in various features.
I liked your Iapetus flyby composite on youtube too - shows very well the frenetic activity of the cameras during that relatively slow flyby.

[dilo]

Welcome, spin0!
Great color images (I tried to make something similar with UV+Clean+IR of South Pole view, but your results are better!).
I suspect that blue/green features are actually SHADOWs of the plume, based on their position respect to tiger stripes fractures.
Any opinion on this?

PS: mgrodzki, your animations are stunning, bravo!

[ugordan]

I suspect that blue/green features are actually SHADOWs of the plume, based on their position respect to tiger stripes fractures.
Any opinion on this?

I have to disagree. It's the coarse ice within the fractures that has a different spectra (notably it's dark in the IR3 deep infrared filter, not particularly so in the IR1 filter) making them blue-green. The plumes are far too dilute to produce any shadowing, in fact they pretty much only scatter light, not block it. Notice there are blue-green fractures to the left as well, far from the pole where the outgassing happens.

BTW, nice work on color registration, Spin0! I think it's funny how the raw contrast stretch algorithm makes it appear Enceladus was illuminated with the usual "white" light from the Sun when in fact the light coming through was pretty yellow/brownish, depending on how much of the illumination is directly due to reflected ringshine. In particular, both the rings and Saturn are dark in the UV3 filter indicating the exposure required was long. And yet, no obvious blur can be seen in the narrow angle. Amazing.