The mission description document is now online (1.24 Mb PDF).

Note: This is the third of four RSS passes to nail down Titan's Love number and higher order gravity coefficients.

EDIT/CORRECTION: In the note above, "four RSS passes," should be replaced with: "three RSS Titan flybys in the nominal mission and two in the extended mission."

On the way in:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...iImageID=114819

ooo err

Brilliant - it's Carry on Cassini.

Good name for the XM actually.

A couple of quick composites from the outbound narrow angles:
Click to view attachmentClick to view attachment
The left one is an approximately natural color view combining CB1/GRN/BL1 frames with color balance taken from my VIMS experiments. The right one is an "enhanced" natural color image using the UV3 filter instead of blue to highlight high altitude hazes. Titan's north appears to be rotated some 30 degrees counterclockwise from top in both views.

I don't know why, but this fuzzy, featureless orange ball just makes me wanna do some more composites.

Cool - how about reprising the oft-used TA composite by McEwen
Blue = UV3
Red = MT3 (deep CH4 band at 889nm)
Green = CB3 (surface 938nm)

Hmmm.. I took a look at that composite (I'm assuming you mean this one?) and it's not a straightforward composite, some tweaking and fudging was obviously done, the surface is visible in all 3 channels and the image advisory suggests 4 images were used, MT2 along with MT3, possibly for removal of atmospheric effects for the green channel.

I tried to mimick the release, but this is hardly scientific as Photoshop doesn't have a ratio function for two images. There's only so much that can be done with raw and uncalibrated jpegs.
Click to view attachment

Beautiful ugordan.... even if not exactly accurate....

Compare with

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06229

and

http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06139

this is a keeper....

Craig

Wow!

That's awesome! It looks like a giant Cyclops dancing. With a concentric feature set as the Cyclopian eye!

(I'm seeing some interesting patterns down there...very cool!)

-Mike

Based on the 'Looking Ahead' for this flyby I was expecting some detailed ISS imagery of Adiri, including coverage of part of the T8 RADAR swath west of Huygens. Was this changed, or are there still some to come down?

Everything is good!

Aah . . .

Say no more.

still not there

someone needs to give the server a kick

On the way now? See the new 'looking ahead' on Ciclops.

From the Looking ahead for Rev48:

"this flyby (known as T34) will allow for imaging of the Saturn-facing portion of Titan’s trailing hemisphere, centered near the dark, equatorial region named Senkyo."

"VIMS will be controlling spacecraft pointing during the first couple of hours after closest approach. Several high-resolution VIMS image "cubes" (or datasets) are planned for the period around closest approach. Several observations are planned for Titan’s dark, equatorial terrain, in northwestern Shangri-la and Belet."


Whoo-hoo!!!! Sweeeeeeeet!!!!

-Mike

(Anybody up for some side bets?)

No specular reflections will be observed.

(No hard reasons, but I am suspicious when the amount of 'fluid' observed appears to be a function of cranking up the contrast.)