Voyager 1 Approach Video by Bjorn Jonsson

Voyager 1 Approach Video by Bjorn Jonsson from Chopping Block on Vimeo.

“This movie is different from similar Voyager movies because I'm keeping Jupiter's size constant. This is accomplished by reprojecting the source images to simple cylindrical projection and then rendering everything using the same viewing geometry. I also sharpened the images a bit to better reveal various details.” — Bjorn Jonsson

The time lapse estimation is about 10 Earth hours per second. Special thanks to unmannedspaceflight.com for all the awesome.

Schenk’s House of 3-D Moons!

Paul Schenk has been taking new and old data from missions to the various moons of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and building 3-D models of what it might be like to fly through some of their more fascinating features. These are renders built from actual images, so often you might see areas of lower resolution due to a lack of better mission data. The one posted above of Hi'iaka Montes on Io is one of the best on his youTube page as the data available from the region is mostly in high resolution with few gaps.

Saturn Still Images Come to Life

If you haven’t followed the work of Stephen v2 and his film “Outside In”, you might want to take a look at what he has in store for us. Using only still images from the Cassini mission, Stephen is making a very impressive tour of the Saturn system without using any CGI, 3D models or textures. While those techniques make great Hollywood films they often fall short of making something that is actually a real place… look real. See below for a very brief clip of how this all ends up looking with a much better and longer clip coming in the near future.

from New "Outside In" clip teaser from stephen v2 on Vimeo.

Rounding the Pole of Iapetus

What it might have looked like to be riding Cassini as it rounded the pole of Iapetus from the last encounter. The animation was compiled using images composed by Gordan Ugarkovic.

A Saturnian Aurora Captured

Astro0 (a contributor to unmannedspaceflight.com) had been looking through a 159 frame set of images that showed a tiny portion of Saturn's sunlit limb. He animated it just to see the effect and happened upon a pretty nice animation of a Saturnian aurora (click here for the animation). Which is likely the first time we are seeing an aurora on another world so clearly animated.

To be clear… the spots that stand still in the animation are artifacts of the images. The streaks are stars seemingly flying by due to Cassini’s cameras being trained on one spot as it and Saturn itself are moving through space. Astro0’s blog can be found here and I suspect will soon feature a post with more details on the animation in the very near future.

Rhea Flyby Animation

Another Gordan Ugarkovic. It never ends!

Echos of Apollo Online

Follow the Apollo 11 mission in real time at wechosethemoon.org for the 40th anniversary of Apollo 11. The site comes complete with a gorgeous mission animation that shows the viewer what stage the mission is in as the data loads in the background. Once the page opens up we are treated to various interactive modules like photo and video galleries featuring material from the current stage of the mission as well as an oddly placed JFK and Apollo gallery.

The best part is the real-time audio stream. As I am writing this, the astronauts are asleep and every 15 minutes mission control interrupts the static to essentially report how long they have been asleep and that the mission is progressing nominally. As boring as that is… it sure makes it real and takes those too young to have been a part of it as close to knowing how that might have felt to follow this historic event. Of course, the whole thing peaks on the 20th with the real-time streaming of touch down at Tranquility Base.

Also see NASA’s newly restored footage of Apollo 11 and Neil Armstrong’s magnificent first step.

Solar Videos Set to Music

This video was compiled and the music composed by Jeff Sheilds aka Podcast Troubadour. Some may recall Jeff also composed these themes for The Carnival of Space for September 2007.

Time Lapse Imagery from ISS

While astronaut Don Pettit was living aboard the International Space Station (ISS), he used some of his off-duty time to make time lapse videos of what he was seeing outside of the ISS window. There are a few examples of this work in this video from Science Friday (NPR). It begins with some beautiful aurora followed by a view of the solar panels rotating (they do this every 90 mins) and a simple look at the earth whirling about through a portal window.

See also this experiment involving candy corns.

Friend a Moon on Facebook

It is true. You can become friends with all the best moons on Facebook these days. Who wouldn’t want to get closer to Io. Maybe get to know better Jupiter’s moon Europa. Maybe you live in the same Solar System as Enceladus?!

Moon Tube

JAXA has set up its Kaguya YouTube page. Lots of moon videos like the one above, which has been sped up and converted to a gif here (showing only about 1 of every 20 frames). See the full animation here.

Prometheus (the Movie)

Yes, another movie of Prometheus disturbing Saturn’s rings. This is the longest clip and includes the most ring swinging action for your money. This version has been cropped and reduced down from the original. See here for a larger, wider view of the same animation (2M gif).

Visual Online Solar System

Simple yet informative online model of the solar system. I knew Jupiter had over 60 moons, but you don’t really visualize that until you see a model in action (seen above). The thing that really becomes clear is how many minor moons orbit WELL beyond the orbits of the major moons of the outer planets. It also provides models of some of the more well-known extrasolar planetary systems to the extent of bodies that we are currently aware of.

Roving Mars

How do I not see these things? This was from back in 2006. I don’t recall ever hearing of this. It is an IMAX on the two Mars rover missions Spirit and Opportunity. Coincidentally, Paul Newman who passed recently apparently had something to do with it as well. I assume narration.

Update: IMAX in a Basement

Its been a while since I have updated the progress on IMAX in a Basement, which features imagery from the Cassini mission. See youTube for a nice “Problems Solved” video that includes a sweet sweep across what looks like Enceladus toward Saturn.

Express Way to Venus

Too few images come from the Venus Express mission. Probably has something to do with its featurelessness. The only way to see this level of detail in the Venusian clouds is by using alternative flase-color imaging. These frames were taken in ultraviolet light.

Plume Diving: The Departure

Cassini moves away from it’s risky encounter at Enceladus… This came out so cool that it looks fake.

IMAGE NOTE: 3 frames of this 13 frame animation were “faked” in that adjacent frames were used to fill in gaps. The size and position of Enceladus was simply adjusted on these frames to create a smoother transition where needed. Additionally, the last 3 frames had stars added to the background for consistency.

Cassini’s Io Animation

Check out this great animation found on the internet a while back that was compiled from images taken by the Cassini probe as it flew by Jupiter at the tail end of 2000. It used to be hosted at a U.S. astrogeology site which no longer exists and the animation was credited to Paul Geissler. Those glowing dots are active volcanoes. At the very end there is a blast of light from a crescent Io coming into view. The features are strikingly similar to those of the “dark side” image of Io published here during the New Horizons encounter, including the “auroral displays in Io’s tenuous atmosphere interacting with Jupiter’s magnetosphere”.

NOTE: The animation was cleaned up a bit by wanderingspace.net just for presentation purposes. This mostly included increasing the canvas size, removing all the surrounding noise and darkening the disc of Io itself.

F-Ring Animation

Prometheus disturbing the F-Ring as it passes. We have seen this animated before, but perhaps not from such a vantage point.

Ranger IX, Camera A

A while back wanderingspace posted 2 great animations of the Mariner flybys of Mars. They had a great nickelodeon feel to them and are two of the best posts on this blog (in our opinion). So when Emily Lackdawalla posted recently on the first “earthrise” as seen from a probe in orbit around the moon – she linked to this great database of moon shot mission images from the 60’s. Glimpsing at these collections, it was clear that there existed the same potential for another nickelodeon style animation of a trip to the moon.

The mission shown above is Ranger IX and there are many more potential animations that can be made from other Ranger missions or from the Lunar Orbiter series of images. Maybe one day.

Sorry for the huge file size… about 1M.