PIA07650: Movement in the Shadows

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07650

10/29/05:

WOW - um - er - uh - just - wow!

I had thought that the ring shadows would make for some serious weather on Saturn, and this picture seems to do a great job of showing just that. Thanks!

the two are not necesarily related. but they do make a pretty picture though

I don't know about that -- intuitively, one would expect the ring shadows to have a pretty large effect on Saturn's weather, especially in the upper parts of the atmosphere where internal heat sources are likely less important.

In particular, the latitudes shadowed by the B Ring should get basically no sunlight at all for long periods. That's got to have some effect.

The visibility features of atmosphere such as it reveals small, bright and puffy clouds with long filamentary streamers that are reminiscent of the anvil-shaped Earthly cirrus clouds that extend downwind of thunderstorms. Dark ring shadows hang over the scene while the planet rotates beneath.

That means that the rings are semi-transparent so Cassini spacecraft is able to see the atmosphere features thru the rings.

Rodolfo

Tried to improve clouds visibility of this amazing image in both illuminated and shadowed portions (latter is negative due to solarization):
Click to view attachment
Moreover, I enhanced the shadowed clouds in order to make more evident their 3-dimensional structure...

Hi dilo, in fact the colorized Saturn looks now more 3-dimensional to me - even more than your second - very nice!

Same technique used for this just released image:

Hey, it's a most beautiful colored crystal ball

Even if final result is something psichedelic, I can assure you that my major intention was to make more visible faint contrast details...

That reminded me right away of ELO's "Out of the Blue".

Airbag

Yeah, but... like, wow, man!



-the other Doug

and... uh... like, groovy, too. Ya know?

--Bill