Following up on yesterday’s post, Gordan Ugarkovic found another “Kodak” moment involving Enceladus from the recent raw images. The Cassini team apparently will arrange to have the probe snap these kinds of images every so often to essentially fulfill PR needs. They have actually dubbed them as “Kodak Moments” when planning for gathering more compositionally compelling images of Saturn and its moons for public consumption.
Shouldn’t there just be an Ugarkovic category at this point?
Here is a recent set of raw Saturn images (red, green and blue filters) combined to create a near-true color shot. 
Of course, the moons and Cassini were both moving and changing the perspective of the 3 bodies from one another from one filtered exposure to the next (the effects of which can be seen at left). So it was required that the 2 moons be “lifted” from the main image, properly registered for each individual moon and then merged back into the main composition. Once in place, a bit of Photoshop retouching was needed to erase the echoes in the 2 other channels where the moons were before registration was corrected.
The raw files archive on the Cassini site only reports which object was targeted, so it did not specify that the other moon is Mimas… but I cannot image what other globe that could possibly be seemingly inside Enceladus’s orbit.
Another Gordan Ugarkovic beauty.
Managed to make the more common wallpaper size 1024x768 for the 14 most recent wallpaper posts (started with set 05 images, 1-4 to come). Download zip file here. Some were not produced as they just didn’t translate so easily into the format. However, the opposite is true in some cases such as for this image of the Martian south pole. Its resolution was hopelessly low for the larger landscape format, so now with the smaller size it was possible (just barely) to get it posted as a wallpaper.
Included in the set for download are the images pictured at the top and for the sake of google search, here they are listed out:
Officially this site’s most mentioned personality, Gordan Ugarkovic does it again with a series of color images combined to show an hour at Saturn. In addition to this being a gorgeous animation, the very image of Saturn and Titan in the same frame has thus far, in and of itself, been quite a rarity in the Cassini mission. The other moon visible in the shot is Dione.
Original image appears on the unmannedspaceflight forum.
Another Saturnati, also with camera artifact. Another U. Gordan image, see Gordan Ugarkovic’s Flickr Page for hi-res version.
Not totally sure what this film will be like, but the potential of someone using the best imagery of the Cassini mission to create 3 dimensional environments set to music seems quite exciting. There’s not a ton of animation on the site, but what there is seems pretty good (despite the numerous screen shots of the back of someone’s head watching various pop stars?!). The above image is a still sample of what one would hope would represent the majority of what might be coming. Go to outsideinthemovie.com and check out the clips in the WATCH section, especially the “Basement IMAX” one which explains part of what he is attempting. But in order to make it happen, it seems donations are in order. Open up your wallet and help make it happen or take part in the process by submitting some images of yourself as requested by the creator (see the SUPPORT section).
Image Note: According to the film maker, “There is no computer-generated imagery in the film. No 3D models, no texture-mapping or any other rendered data. The only thing that has been done is taking many actual photos (including some high resolution mosaics) and using some very special and computer-intensive processing to create the feeling of depth and movement”.
The haze is a camera artifact, but somehow adds to the image here. Another U. Gordan image, see U. Gorgan’s Flickr Page for hi-res version.
Saturn as seen with spectral filters sensitive to wavelengths of light centered at 890 nanometers. In other words… false color or false non-color? Maybe false monochrome.
I tend to not get many of the small bodies in here simply due to the fact that they tend to not be geologically active, are grey in color and lack the grandeur of size. But here is a tiny moon that orbits just outside Saturn’s A-ring and is only about 40 by 20 kilometers in size. What makes this tiny body notable to me, is its shape which many assume is due to the collection of ring particles upon its surface.
As the rings of Saturn are so very flat, the materials all appear to have collected all along Atlas’s equator and as this material piles up it elongates the shape of the moon. This has erased any craters that may have existed on the tiny moon and created one of the Solar System’s more unusual surface features. The piled up equator of Atlas looks more like it is covered with snow and has ultimately given us our first naturally formed flying saucer (see inset side view). You can almost see the truly original form of Atlas somewhere in the middle hidden by the massive amounts of “ring-fall” over its many ages.
Once upon a time I did a large number of book covers (or dust jackets) for a Sci-Fi publisher known as Tor Books. While looking through old back-up files today I found this one that featured Saturn’s rings and it’s now famous moon Titan. Since I am currently working on a poster that celebrates the Cassini mission, I thought I should post this design on here as it happens to be one of my favorites.
I would have to guess that I have been involved with designing around 200 book jackets designs for Tor, both before and after starting the Chopping Block. Among some of the more famous titles I got to work on were Jonathan Lethem’s “Gun with Occasional Music”, Kim Stanley Robinson’s “The Three Californias” trilogy and vampire title, (soon to be a major motion picture) “I am Legend”. The Lethem and “Legend” books had provided artwork, but we also got to do a few other Lethem titles where we did all the art as well as the design.
Image Note: I found this file (not shown) I thought was the hard cover artwork, but instead it was the less impressive mass market edition of the jacket. I will upload a better hi-res version next week when I get back to the office. In the meantime I found this version online of the hard-cover and tried to clean up the jpg artifacts the best I could.
Image Note: the top image’s rings were extended to the far right to fill the page. The original image was square format.
I stumbled across an image of Mars and our moon a while back, either on Universe Today or just from looking for great images of Mars on google. Anyway, it never occured to me that you can get such great detail of Mars while still being able to see a limb of the Moon in the same view. I thought it was a Photoshop job until I looked up “occult+Saturn+moon” and found similar images. For some reason, Jupiter images are more a rarity. What is unmistakable is that the above Moon/Mars image by Ron Dantowitz is pretty incredible for its clarity and detail.
I couldn’t find any of the moon and a tiny blue dot of Uranus, but you can always use your imagination.
U. Gordan just sent me one of Venus too
A few posts back I uploaded a closer detail of this same image. This is the best “portrait” image of Phoebe available taken by Cassini on its way into the Saturn system and orbit insertion. Being so far out from the rest of the most dle scientific targets (4x as far as Iapetus), this was the only up-close visit planned to the tiny moon who’s size is about 220km average width.
There appears to be a layer of dark material covering the small moon Phoebe as revealed by the collapse of materials in the northern region of the small moon. Phoebe orbits Saturn outside the orbit of Iapetus and has been considered a possible candidate for the dark material also found covering one side of that unusual moon. What may have caused this transfer of materials is still a mystery… or that Phoebe had anything to do with that feature on Iapetus is still very much in question.
Some propose that Phoebe is actually a captured comet from the Kuiper belt (a region of small bodies orbiting the sun beyond Neptune of which Pluto is considered a member). If this is true, the images taken by cassini would be the only images of such bodies to be anything other than a single point of light.
According to the Cassini website, this image was taken at about 58 degrees below the ring-plane in the southern hemisphere. The southern lower half of Saturn tends to appear yellow-peach while (at current) the northern half of Saturn leans to a white-grey-blue, with varying effects from the shadows of the rings cast upon the cloud tops (just visible on the middle-left). It is unusual to view such a large area of Saturn’s globe without the intrusion of rings or ring-shadows and it reminds us how gorgeous Saturn would be even without its stunning rings.
From the Cassini website, “Like black and white photos of earthly family and friends, monochrome images of Saturn can also capture their subject with crisp poignancy. This infrared view from high above Saturn's ringplane highlights the contrast in the cloud bands, the dimly glowing rings and their shadows on the gas giant planet. The overall effect is stirring”.
For my money, nobody does Saturn better than Gordan Ugarkovic. PLEASE browse his Flickr account when possible. The bigger spot is Dione and the two tiny pin-pricks are Janus and Epimetheus.
Rhea on the edge.
So maybe I’m just going to go with a more fantastic version of Saturn color. I also opted for the more familiar “front lit” view of the rings.
