Rev198: Saturn wide-angle mosaic Options

[ugordan]

On October 10th, Cassini wide-angle camera captured a set of 12 RGB footprints covering Saturn and the rings. Here's an attempt at compositing that data into a mosaic. It's not geometrically accurate, but I tried coaxing the data into at least looking nice.

[elakdawalla]

...and that one's going straight to the blog. Absolutely amazing work with the raw JPEGs, Gordan.

[tedstryk]

My jaw just hit the floor...amazing!

[ElkGroveDan]

Holy smokes! I'm speechless. Thank you Gordan for sharing.

[Astro0]

Wow! That's the sort of view I've dreamed I would only ever see in a science fiction movie or if we had somekind of amazing futuristic spacecraft orbiting around that distant ringed planet....WAIT! We do!

[Explorer1]

Aaaand that's a new desktop...

[remcook]

Really great!

[Ian R]

Amazing Gordan!

If you don't mind me picking your brain, just how do you go about combining the night-side hemisphere with the sunlit part of the disc? HDR merging or your own special sauce?

This was my attempt at working with the Clear-filtered frames:

http://postimg.org/image/w3qnpzhtl/full/

[ugordan]

Ian, I simply assumed the original data used 12bit encoding mode used so the JPEG DNs are basically linear (a reasonable, but not 100% accurate assumption when uncalibrated images are concerned) as it looked that way to me and the color profile I use in Photoshop (and the one I use for calibrated data that is linearized by default) automatically adjusts that to the sRGB 2.2 display gamma. The nightside was heavily noise-reduction filtered to reduce blocky artifacts, though.

[The Bad Astronom...]

...and that one's going straight to the blog. Absolutely amazing work with the raw JPEGs, Gordan.

I just posted about it as well, with a description of some of the sights. Gordan, this was an AMAZING piece of work! And Emily, thanks for linking to it; I saw it first in your tweet and blog. I credit you, of course.

http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2..._ugarkovic.html

[Sorry to misspell your first name in the URL!] My favorite part (besides the steep angle lowering the usual elliptical appearance of the rings) is seeing Prometheus and Pandora to the upper right of the F ring. Astonishing, on this scale.

[jamescanvin]

Oh My! That is astonishing. New desktop here as well.

[stephenv2]

On October 10th, Cassini wide-angle camera captured a set of 12 RGB footprints covering Saturn and the rings. Here's an attempt at compositing that data into a mosaic. It's not geometrically accurate, but I tried coaxing the data into at least looking nice.

"looking nice" is the understatement of the century. That is a stunning. breathtaking image. Incredible work.

Any chance of sending me the uncompressed master of this? This would be ideal for animation sequence in the film due to its resolution

[Explorer1]

You're on Slashdot too (and so is this thread).
http://science.slashdot.org/story/13/10/17...n-all-its-glory

[ElkGroveDan]

My favorite part ... is seeing Prometheus and Pandora to the upper right of the F ring. Astonishing, on this scale.

Whoa, Phil, good eye. That really is amazing.

[stephenv2]

My favorite part (besides the steep angle lowering the usual elliptical appearance of the rings) is seeing Prometheus and Pandora to the upper right of the F ring. Astonishing, on this scale.

Agreed. Gordan sent me a lossless version of this for use in the film and I'm mulling over it if I can connect it to some of Cassini's closer view of Prometheus and Pandora. I will have to look closely at my raw archives. There is some stuff here but not sure if 100% will match up: Cassin Raw image movie.

I just looked at this on my cheap 50" Seiki 4K UltraHD I have hooked up to my main desktop. Pretty staggering at full resolution. Can't wait to see this on a 8-story high screen.