THANK GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!

Modern webservers do on-the-fly gzip compression, though the speedup may not be apparent.

This turned out to be a more interesting release than I had expected. Because of all of the recent Enceladus flybys in the extended mission I had managed to completely forget that this release includes the first targeted Enceladus flyby in 2008 (it occurred on March 12). The best images are in directory 1584035653_1584189857 on the coiss_2042 volume.

There are also interesting low phase images of Rhea from ~550,000 km where the phase angle drops down to 0.05 degrees. They are in directory 1579255943_1579280127 on the coiss_2041 volume. These are the best low phase Rhea observations so far and nicely reveal the opposition surge:

Click to view attachment

My measurements may be a bit crude but the result is obvious. At this scale the brightness at exactly zero phase is probably ~1.1.

I would like to note that in the directory http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/data/cassi...assini_orbiter/ you can find new files (updated January 16) with name xxxxx_MD5.txt. Cryptographic hash function MD5 is commonly used to check the integrity of files, now each Cassini's file is in MD5 expressed as a 32 digit hexadecimal number.

example:
b41fdfd79ca9eb873f86f9e910a66be7 coiss_2001/data/1454725799_1455008789/N1454738788_1.LBL
70d3903a26f05673022d98de4cf53dc3 coiss_2001/data/1454725799_1455008789/N1454725799_1.IMG
4b2321a08362f019afa50915faed31e8 coiss_2001/data/1454725799_1455008789/N1454738788_1.IMG
9b8e12e3469407daa881168233c5c95a coiss_2001/data/1454725799_1455008789/N1454725799_1.LBL
07d2bf79db8a5939f3361c260c3b9794 coiss_2001/data/1454725799_1455008789/N1454745007_1.IMG
53e278ab66c32d87a11c7b7c37e14074 coiss_2001/data/1454725799_1455008789/N1454726579_1.IMG
792848149f521c6d57fdb65a27a7f5a3 coiss_2001/data/1454725799_1455008789/N1454745007_1.LBL
82171afd4c7bcbaa11c4e27be835d3bf coiss_2001/data/1454725799_1455008789/N1454726579_1.LBL
9e785eda0deb16860f07c758aefc17fd coiss_2001/data/1454725799_1455008789/N1454745055_1.IMG
368bc03dc3aef22914d308a44160ea65 coiss_2001/data/1454725799_1455008789/N1454727359_1.IMG

...it's apparently been available since March 18 or so but I got the email from the PDS today. As before, there are now tarred and zipped archives available for all the images. Seems to be a lot of ring movies in there, spoke formation stuff -- are there any exciting moon encounters in this batch?

--Emily

There are a few nontargeted icy satellite flybys but no targeted ones. The most interesting satellite images are great views of Tethys' Ithaca Chasma from ~180,000 km. There are some decent views of Mimas and Enceladus from ~200,000 km and Rhea from ~350,000 km. I haven't checked if there are interesting images of the small 'rocks' yet.

FWIW I don't think these images became available until right at the end of March (I checked every day in the last week of March ).

BTW the images of Tethys I mentioned are in directory data\1588868011_1589091244 on volume coiss_2044.

I should also mention that this release includes some highly spectacular images of Saturn's northern hemisphere. A good example is some of the images in the directory that precedes the one mentioned above.

What's more, the new calibration volume has been released, although it's still being reviewed.

Looks like it's time to go back to the software and check/refine the calibration procedure with new info...

This is great news - I didn't notice this volume. Now I also need to check my calibration code. Actually it would probably a good idea to compare our calibration results to get rid of possible bugs.

The email from the PDS had this to say about the calibration updates:
Question: Are these updates retroactive -- do they affect how images from early in the mission get calibrated? Or do they have to do with secular changes in ISS so affect only more recent data?

Cassini images covering the period from October 1 to December 31, 2008 were released by the PDS three days ago. I havent looked at everything yet but I took a quick look at all of the icy satellite images plus the almost 1000 images of Titan. There is a lot of interesting icy satellite images this time, especially Enceladus with two targeted flybys. The highlights:

105 images of Mimas.
Beautiful Mimas/Prometheus mutual event (directory coiss_2049/data/1603163051_1603326763)
Mimas from approximately ~180,000 km (directory coiss_2049/data/1603527465_1603553855)

599 images of Enceladus.
Targeted flyby of Enceladus on 2008-10-09 (directory coiss_2049/data/1602219901_1602277473)
Targeted flyby of Enceladus on 2008-10-31 (directory coiss_2049/data/1604111692_1604168387)
Enceladus on 2008-12-02 from ~125,000 km (directory coiss_2050/data/1606797017_1607025755)
Enceladus plume images on 2008-12-26 from ~760,000 km (directory coiss_2051/data/1608970573_1609104344)

113 images of Tethys.
Tethys on 2008-10-10 from ~400,000 km with Ithaca Chasma visible (directory coiss_2049/data/1602277538_1602387820)
Hi-res images of Tethys on 2008-11-24 from ~60,000 km (directory coiss_2050/data/1606210264_1606378271)
Tethys on 2008-12-09 from ~250,000 km (directory coiss_2050/data/1607482567_1607567228)

43 images of Dione.

136 images of Rhea.
Low-phase Rhea on 2008-10-05 from ~850,000 km (directory coiss_2049/data/1601659146_1601870393)
Rhea on 2008-11-01 from ~480,000 km, phase ~85° (directory coiss_2049/data/1604264777_1604402429)

880 images of Titan.

In many case there are images in the directories preceding and following the ones listed here.

Cassini images covering the period from January 1 to March 31, 2009 were released by the PDS.
http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/data/cassi...assini_orbiter/ (coiss_2052 and coiss_2053)

Nontargeted flyby of RHEA on 2009-02-02 (directory
http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/data/cassi...251_1612261808/ and
http://pds-imaging.jpl.nasa.gov/data/cassi...825_1612297448/ )

I'm resurrecting this thread again - updates to the Cassini image database from the past several PDS image releases have been posted at the same URL as before (thanks to Emily / The Planetary Society for hosting this):

http://planetary.org/explore/topics/cassin...s_database.html

There's further information there, including information on how to import the updates. The updates are Excel files. In short, unzip the updates, open the database in Access, and then do File > Get External Data > Import to import the XLS file just unzipped. Accept the default options, and then, when asked "Where would you like to store your data?" choose the table "coiss" in the list that appears next to "In an Existing Table."

A Cassini data release occurred a few days ago. This release is somewhat unusual as there are absolutely no interesting icy satellite images. However, there are several targeted and nontargeted Titan flybys plus lots and lots of interesting ring images. With equinox approaching (August 2009; this release covers April-June 2009) the focus was on the rings. I have now looked at all of the coiss_2054 images; there are lots of images showing satellite shadows on the rings and some images showing shadows cast by features in the rings themselves. There are also various movies, including F ring movies. The most interesting directories in my opinion:

coiss_2054\data\1617917998_1618066143 : Shadows cast by features at the edge of a gap.

coiss_2054\data\1621652147_1621937939 : The outer edge of the A ring showing Daphnis with shadows of ring features visible at the inner edge of the Keeler gap.

coiss_2054\data\1621957143_1621968573 : Movie: The outer edge of the A ring, shadows from a disturbance are visible when Daphnis passes by. Propeller feature near the outer edge of the Encke gap.

coiss_2055 might be even more interesting since at covers a period closer to equinox but I have yet to take a detailed look at it.

I'm waiting to take a look at these until I can access the volumes through the OPUS search tool at the Rings node; I understand they have to receive copies of the volumes on DVD-ROM from the Imaging Node first (how archaic!) but they should be available there within a week or two.

..delivered by a guy driving an AMC Gremlin and listening to his 8-track player.

I have now also taken a quick look at all of the images in the coiss_2055 volume and as I suspected they are even more interesting than the coiss_2054 images. I can hardly wait for the next release which covers the equinox ring imaging.

The highlights in my opinion are in these directories:

coiss_2055\data\1622711732_1623166344 and coiss_2055\data\1623166377_1623224391 :
Great images of Daphnis, the Keeler gap and shadows cast by features at the edges of the gap.

coiss_2055\data\1624654802_1624836470 and coiss_2055\data\1624836945_1625069379 :
Beautiful Daphnis/Keeler gap images showing ring feature shadows @820,000 km.

Two examples from the the many ring images. Calibrated, cropped and slightly sharpened images:

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment

The database update for the April 1, 2010 ISS PDS release has been posted on the database page at the TPS website:

http://planetary.org/explore/topics/cassin...s_database.html

(you need to scroll down a bit to find the two relevant files for the April 1, 2010 release)

I forgot to 'announce' this here until now - database updates for the October 1, 2010 and January 1, 2011 data releases were recently posted at http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/ca...s_database.html

The Cassini images for the period April 1 to June 30, 2010 were recently released at the PDS. This release contains *lots* of interesting satellite images, including beautiful closeups of Enceladus' plumes. There are 2 images of Mimas, 227 of Enceladus, 2 of Tethys, 181 of Dione, 13 of Rhea, 2 of Hyperion, 1114 of Titan and 170 images of Iapetus.

This is a quick and dirty false color composite of Enceladus from IR3, GRN and UV3 images obtained on May 18, 2010 at a range of 45,000. It is centered near latitude 0° and longitude 310°. It has been processed to reveal compositional differences:

Click to view attachment

The extreme color saturation reveals that I probably should align the images more carefully but still it reveals interesting features, for exactly somewhat 'bluish' terrain in the upper left quadrant and 'blue' color near most/all fractures.

EDIT: Replaced the original image with a better version. The color channels are now more carefully aligned.

Nice!

"There are 2 images of Mimas, 227 of Enceladus, 2 of Tethys, 181 of Dione, 13 of Rhea, 2 of Hyperion, 1114 of Titan and 170 images of Iapetus."

And 4 images of Janus, and some of Epimetheus and Pandora .

Two images, second one is Janus in false colors (ir3+grn+uv3 filters), 1.5× magnified, first one is hi-res image of Dione, colorised from lower resolution images
(again ir+grn+uv filters, but notably manually corrected, so it's very artistic interpretation ).
Image of Dione is without detailed information in index tab. So I tried excerpt some information about it.
This image covers small area in Eurotes Chasmata and big crater (at top of the image) has coordinates approx. latitude -24S, longitude 323W.
Horizontal resolution is ~14 m/pix, vertical is much lower. Highest cliffs are more than 1 km height.

Great images, especially the one of Dione which shows a real landscape at this resolution, overall with an alien appearance but there are some features that look a bit similar to terrestrial landscapes.

And regarding Dione, I now see that there are more images of it than I thought. I found the Dione images using a database search with target='DIONE' but for these images Saturn is the target for some reason (and the viewing geometry applies to Saturn) but the target description is 'DIONE' and the target list includes Dione. Weird - and I obviously need to modify my database queries.

By the way I decided to replace the image in the starting message of this thread with a significantly improved version. I discovered that I had forgotten to rotate it so that south was originally up (north is up in the new version). Perhaps more importantly, I have now aligned the color channels much more carefully.

This is getting a bit embarassing, I had to replace the image again because I discovered that the original version really *was* correctly oriented (I forgot to check a "north azimuth" orientation box in the rendering software). Everything should be correct now but if anyone notices any errors please let me know!

You'll see that happen when camera is not specifically targeted at the satellite. This usually occurs near closest approach when a non-ORS instrument is prime and the satellite happens to pass through the field of view, or they do a skeet-shoot sequence.

I have found the TARGET_DESC field to be handy for this purpose. Most of the photos taken for optical navigation/orbit determination, which include some nice icy moon images, have TARGET_NAMEs of "SKY." An example database query:

...but I didn't realize that the TARGET_NAME might be SATURN instead. Sometimes there's no substitute for browsing the whole dang data release. That's why I love the OPUS search tool at the Rings Node so much -- you can get as many as 500 thumbnails per page, color coded by filter used. They don't have the April 1 data release up yet but I expect it to be there within the next few days.

I need to do some comprehensive testing to determine which query guarantees that you get every image you are looking for (assuming the metadata contains no errors) but this might work:

SELECT *
FROM coiss
WHERE coiss.TARGET_NAME='MIMAS' Or coiss.TARGET_DESC='MIMAS'

In addition it might be necessary to check whether the target_list contains the string 'MIMAS'.

The challenging thing is that I usually limit my searches by TARGET_DISTANCE in order to get only images that have more than, say, 100 pixels across the disk -- but that doesn't work, sadly, if MIMAS is not the TARGET. With a little trigonometry though, at least for the inner moons, you could at least limit it by the CENTRAL_BODY_DISTANCE (no greater than Mimas' orbital radius plus whatever distance to Mimas you're looking for) to weed out spurious hits where MIMAS is in the TARGET_LIST but is only a speck.

New Cassini ISS volumes COISS_2062 and COISS_2063 are now available for browsing at OPUS:

http://pds-rings.seti.org/search/results/#...meid=COISS_2062

http://pds-rings.seti.org/search/results/#...meid=COISS_2063

The database updates for the April 1, 2011 data release (which covers the period from April 1, 2010 to June 30, 2010) are now available at http://www.planetary.org/explore/topics/ca...s_database.html

There are lots of interesting satellite images (especially of Enceladus and Dione) in this most recent data release.

A new version of the entire ISS image database is now available here:

http://planetary.org/explore/topics/cassin...s_database.html

It includes data up to and including the most recent PDS release on October 1, 2011. The entire database was updated instead of posting smaller files containing the latest PDS releases because several recent ISS volumes had errors in the INDEX.TAB files - the subspacecraft longitude was off by 180 degrees. This has now been corrected and the database contains information from the updated and corrected INDEX.TAB files.

I strongly recommend replacing older versions of the database with this one (if you have created any queries you want to keep you should copy them from the old database to the new one before deleting the old one).

The following item was published in the most recent Planetary Exploration Newsletter:Poking around for a couple of minutes I found various useful items like this master observation schedule. Not sure what else is there.