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First Images From 50-km Enceladus Flyby

Posted by kdawson on from the over-the-shoulder-spinning dept.

CheshireCatCO writes "The first pictures from yesterday's flyby of Enceladus are now public. At closest approach, Cassini was set spinning to cancel out the apparent motion of Enceladus so as to capture unsmeared images during the 40,000-mph flyby. Although it wasn't clear that this would work (errors in pointing could easily have made the cameras miss their targets), the maneuver panned out beautifully, producing spectacular images of the surface. Images show the 'tiger stripes' at the south pole, including at least one location that has been identified as a source of a jet, as well as considerable vertical relief, easily visible thanks to the low sun-angle near the south pole at present. Processed, enhanced images should follow shortly."

13 of 95 comments (clear)

  1. Actually huge amount of terrain by deft · · Score: 4, Informative

    At first glance I thought these pics would be better if they were further back to get an idea of scale.

    Then noticed that the pictures are marked anywhere from 33 to 98 feet PER PIXEL. these pictures actually have quite alot of land below, and I think it's just the nature of the resolution and shot that make it look like its a much smaller scale.

    I'm glad there are scientists that study this that can make out alot more than I... but very happy this worked none-the-ess.

    --

    There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
    1. Re:Actually huge amount of terrain by OriginalArlen · · Score: 4, Informative

      See Emily Lakdawalla's pre-encounter blog piece for the Planetary Society, and follow-ups as the data's arriving.

      They flew over the south pole at a range of 30km at 50,000 relative speeds. The relative movement was so fast that they had to turn the entire s/c to point backwards before closest approach. There are some superb ("amateur") animations on the UMSF thread. (large, though, 60Mb or so each.) The realtime simulation is really mind-blowing. Just watch Enceladus scudding through the FoV of the ISS camera just after c/a. Superb, superb work by the Cassini team (as always!) This is certainly one of the biggest set-piece events of the entire mission after orbit insertion, others being Huygens, the first Titan flyby (that data took a lot of time to interpret, indeed the radar data is still being puzzled over as each narrow swath appears after another flyby - it's hard to do imaging through that pesky yet oh-so-interesting methane atmosphere) and the Iapetus encounter.

      --

      Everything I needed to know about life, I learnt from Blake's Seven
    2. Re:Actually huge amount of terrain by CheshireCatCO · · Score: 3, Informative

      That'll actually take a little while, but we're working on it. The shadows should help interpret the topography, but it's a non-trivial analysis.

    3. Re:Actually huge amount of terrain by CheshireCatCO · · Score: 2, Informative

      There are none (or few, anyway) in the South Polar region of Enceladus. That's what makes it interesting, the terrain appears to be quite young.

    4. Re:Actually huge amount of terrain by wooferhound · · Score: 4, Informative

      Here are some pictures from the Cassini site itself, not slashdotted
      http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/events/enceladus20080811/index.cfm

      --
      We are Dead Stars looking back Up at the Sky
  2. NASA site and images by gzipped_tar · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/raw-images-list1.html
    This is the NASA page for the raw images from the flyby.

    --
    Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
    1. Re:NASA site and images by gzipped_tar · · Score: 4, Informative

      on pages 8-10 there are raw images for the ones used in the press release

      --
      Colorless green Cthulhu waits dreaming furiously.
    2. Re:NASA site and images by bugg_tb · · Score: 5, Informative

      The images are also here: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/index.cfm

  3. Already Slashdotted? by Snowblindeye · · Score: 5, Informative

    The Ciclops site seems to be unresponsive already. Nasa's coverage can be found here http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/events/enceladus20080811/index.cfm

  4. Re:Why is this free? by Stooshie · · Score: 5, Informative

    ... Millions of American taxpayer dollars have been spent gathering this priceless data that is totally unavailable in any other context ...

    Most space programs are internationally funded and carried out by universities of more than one country these days. Of course the data should be made available.

    ... I can guarantee you that any other nation's research programmes would not do this ...

    Yes they do

    --
    America, Home of the Brave. ... .and the Squaw.
  5. Re:A pity by pmontra · · Score: 2, Informative

    Actually Cassini is a joint project between NASA, ESA and ASI, the Italian space agency which contributed the high gain antenna (the big parabolic one you see in Cassini pictures).

    Obviously Italy partecipates to ESA but keeps funding its own agency. The other major European countries do the same.

  6. Re:Why is this free? by zrq · · Score: 3, Informative
    Mission overview

    Cassini-Huygens is an international collaboration between three space agencies. Seventeen nations contributed to building the spacecraft. The Cassini orbiter was built and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Huygens probe was built by the European Space Agency. The Italian Space agency provided Cassini's high-gain communication antenna. More than 250 scientists worldwide are studying the data streaming back from Saturn on a daily basis.

  7. Re:science and perspective, and what a pity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    How about this instead then - you're a fatuous cunt. Is that meaningful enough a rebuttal for you?