Apparently, I stumbled across a temporary version of the Cassini home page that had a true color composite of Titan and Enceladus crescents, a very old one from the raws. It linked to some new movies here.

The five or so new ones are at the top of the page.

Meanwhile, a couple of minutes later the image entry was removed. I guess that's tomorrow's release that somehow slipped through. The image itself wasn't even up on the Photojournal.

While maybe not as asthetically pleasing as say, the Rhea movie, I really like the Pan movie. Shows the first good images showing Pan's shape

A Tale of Two Moons:

http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=1841


Three Moons Meet:

http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=1784


Staying with Epimetheus:

http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=1788


The Silent Spheres:

http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=1840


Rhea Occults Saturn:

http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=1962


Cruising with Pan:

http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=1982



I think Arthur C. Clarke will appreciate these clips!
- John Sheff

I like the Pan clip too!

One thing about it confuses me though. I've found what appear to be the source images on the raw image browser (e.g. http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...eiImageID=74372 ), and there's a discrepancy between the distance listed for the raw images and the movie. The closest image indicates it was taken from 425,392 km, but the release info with the movie says the images were taken at 209,000 km.

Which one is correct?

Is the difference due to a later refinement of Cassini's trajectory vs. the predict?

Bart

209,000 km is correct. It is the difference between having the current kernels and not..

Yes, nice but.... damn, why they always truncate image sequence one instant before ring plane crossing???
I want to see perfectly edge on rings, but in 2 years of Cassini activities I never saw it!!!
Did I missed the image or simply they avoid to take it in order to safely re-orient spacecraft during each plane crossing?

...meanwhile, enjoy this animation from Jun,16 sequence:
Click to view attachment
The big one is Rhea, do someone recognize the small, fast moon passing behind it?

Marco:

It's Shirley. Always was a fast one, our Shirl!

Bob Shaw

A new beautiful sequence of sunglow backscattered from ring A:
Click to view attachment
(start images W00016495-98 / W00016503-06; halved size)

..and this showing transit through ringB, Cassini division and ringA.
Click to view attachment
Note the rotating Saturn atmosphere visible also through ring divisions!
(the sequence is huge: 27 wide angle images! so I had to reduce size to 50%, crop a portion and reduce color detpth to 127 in order to go from original 13MB size to 1M gif ).

rotating F ring faint spiral features (N00067405/15):

Hi Dilo and all,

In the images posted in posts #8 and #9, is this an example of the opposition effect (heiligenschein), refractive effects (a sort of sub sun), or something else. My guess would be that it would be one or the other and that the sun / camera orientation info at the time of imaging could help discriminate between the two.

Thanks in advance for any help on this.


-- Pertinax

Hi Pertinax, what you see is an opposition "backscatter" effect, as illustrated in this official movie: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/vide...cfm?videoID=130
I never heard about refractive "conjunction" effects, they should exhist and be very interesting but also last "eclipse" mosaic do not show clear features...
Anyway, Bjorn is the maximum expert about this, he could answer.

These are textbook examples of the opposition effect (assuming there are textbooks incorporating Cassini data ). As far as I know there are no refractive effects in the rings but I could be wrong...

I wonder if a sun halo could be visible through the rings that have the highest population of small icy particles? Obviously, only VIMS would be safe to look at the sun directly so no neat images here.

Thank you Dilo, Bjorn, and all;

My first reaction was that this was a 'sub-sun', but after being pressed a little to think about it, an opposition effect explanation seemed more reasonable.

With the slight possibility of the E Ring (thanks to Enceladus' spewing), I doubt there would be plate or columnar ice crystals in any of the rings -- thus, no noteworthy refractive effects are likely.

Any disagreements:


-- Pertinax

Another nice opposition movie through A/B rings (note the difference in the backscatter from the two rings, A is a lot weaker)

I'd be careful about making such conclusions based only on raw images. The visual result will vary greatly depending on the amount of stretch applied to the raw image. If it's a bland ring region region it will be stretched more heavily, exaggerating the opposition effect.

Gordan, you are right about raw images limitations.
Anyway, I taken two rapresentative pictures (W00020310 and W00020312) and put toghether, trying to align stretch through gamma+luminosity+contrast change:
Click to view attachment
Result is not perfect, but in my opinion confirms a difference...