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The Saturn Fly-By
Jamie noted that today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is actually a video of Saturn built by compiling actual photographs taken by Cassini in 2004. Unlike most videos of this type, this isn't actually 3D animation, these are the actual photos (albeit "digitally tweaked, cropped"). Great views of the planet, as well as Titan, Mimas and Enceladus.
I couldn't get the video to play at the link in TFA. But this one did: http://vimeo.com/11386048
Excuse me, I need to pick my jaw up off the floor.
Four fifths of all our troubles in this life would disappear if we would just sit down and keep still. -C. Coolidge
It's a space station! Or was I the only one who noticed? @~1:34
I'm not sure I understand what's happened here. It certainly looks like a computer animation!
Is each frame a separate photo? Just cropped to line up with the previous one, cleaned up and colour-treated to match?
Or is there a lot more artifice going on?
Great views of the planet, as well as Titan, Mimas and Enceladus.
Wonderful. Mama makes excellent titanic enchiladas.
The best proof that this is fake is probably at 0:30, where 7 moons are within their angular diameters of each other. What was the date of this extraordinary alignment, so I can confirm it in Celestia?
Anyone else see the death star at 01:33?
what a string of babbling bullshit. you strike me as the sort of person who thinks if they talk for long enough, they will turn into something more than a fucking idiot.
You, sir, obviously do not understand the beauty and gravitas of fine, mind altering chemicals.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
by how beautiful that was.
slashdot: where everyone yells sarcastic metaphors to themselves to understand the issue
They didn't even get the disc in 3D while flying through them - this is AT BEST a 3D rendering with TEXTURES taken from the Cassini flyby - though frankly its so bad and yet marketed otherwise in a fashion that makes me call in question whether or not "Cassini" was real or just a ploy to disguise a nuclear satellite. And I (before seeing this) thought the Moon landing was real!
So it's crossing a 30m thick ring at 10000 km/s, what were you expecting to see?
I don't quite understand the trajectory of the probe. For example in the last shot, it swoops past Mimas zooming straight toward the Saturnian surface, then appears to change direction curving vertically, passing through the rings (why no hail of ice damage?), then swoops back around and turns around heading toward Encledatus at top speed. How is this even possible?
I keep thinking "What is that, a sphere with a lambert shader? Some kind of procedural ring texture on a plane? Might want to add some rocks while passing through the ring so it doesn't just pop. Those shadows are way too sharp, might want to turn on raytracing for those."
It sucks that I can't appreciate this properly and my brain just keeps interpreting it all as fake because my only other reference for something like this are 3D renders.
Also, I've loved Agnus Dei ever since hearing it in Homeworld.
The video makes it look like it does. Or is this a consequence of the zoom factor used, and did Cassini pass the equator outside of the rings?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rings_of_Saturn
You have a spacecraft flying through the rings at a minimum of several thousand miles per hour taking relatively low resolution photos (they don't have a Canon 1DS mk III or Nikon D3X with macro lens on board and can't stop the probe to take a perfect edge-on shot of the rings). Besides, I suspect that when you actually approach the rings up close enough to use a macro lens it would be very disperse, nebulous, much like when you walk up to a dense cloud bank on a mountain and as you approach it, it appears to vanish, even though when you are some distance away it may look opaque, and if the light is at your back, it will be very reflective.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
I read through their other comments - apparently that's their thing.
I think the majority of the problem is that we are accustomed to seeing atmospheric effects in lighting. Space doesn't have that, so your light genuinely is a single point-source. The images thus look like what you would get from simplistic point-source renderers, with sharp shadows, no diffusion and no ambient light, which causes our minds to classify them as fake.
There's some debate here over whether the video is CG or used CG in conjunction with the photos. The NASA Astronomy Pic of the Day article mentions that this video is a part of an upcoming IMAX film called Outside In, who's website has some further explanation on how they're making the film. Of course, the APOD article is a paragraph in length, so an entire website might be a bit much for some to read.
Woah.
And you know. They are rings but they dont ring. Heavy.
I mean they are rings but they are not ringing. This is some deep stuff.
I'm hungry.
I can't believe that Slashdot is so uninformed as to believe this tripe (oh wait I can... sssiiigghhhh). This is a 3d animation, with photos from Cassini used as source. During the big zoom-in around 1:30, not a single pixel of the planet moves. Those massive storms blow quickly, the planet was rotating, etc etc.
The summaries are very misleading. They misrepresent this film as if its actual motion video taken from the probe's perspective. Even the video itself claims no CGI was used, but CGI WAS used! The website even tells us how it was made: "Using hundreds of thousands of still images manipulated to create full motion, using “2.75D” photographic fly-through technology." That's why there are so many errors in perspective and the probe's velocity and position don't make sense. This is a neat FANTASY fly-through made from real photos that people are confusing for the real thing. You people need to start using your brains, for christ sake! Its unfortunate that people feel the need to misrepresent this video, and even worse that everyone just eats it up without questioning what they see.
It was created in order to inspire people and show them the beauty of our solar system. The website even states that this is an "...art film that takes audiences on a journey of the mind, heart and spirit..." but it holds absolutely NO scientific value what so ever, and should not be seen as an accurate portrayal of the Cassini mission.
Damn, tough crowd.