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jupiterzkool
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 05/08/06
Posts: 1341
Loc: Pasadena, CA
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Yes, Cassini's latest flyby will be flying only 50 km from the surface of Enceledus. Image resolution will be 7 meters/pixel. Also, a high resolution thermal scan across the "tiger stripes" will be done.
For images, videos and a mission blog on the flyby, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini
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Scott G. Edgington, Planetary Scientist
Cassini-Huygens: Mission to Saturn & Titan
Yes, Asia, John Wetton Fan
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llanitedave
Humble Megalomaniac
Reged: 09/26/05
Posts: 10474
Loc: Amargosa Valley, NV, USA
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Will they have to rotate the spacecraft to keep the imager pointed at one spot?
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"S.O.E." (Sauron's Other Eye) 16" Royce conical mirror: A permanent work in progress.
10" Homebuilt dob, old Coulter mirror
Next Project: The "Eye of Sauron" Observatory!
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jupiterzkool
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 05/08/06
Posts: 1341
Loc: Pasadena, CA
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Well, dear sir, you can see for yourself by looking at this webpage our just download the mission description PDF.
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Scott G. Edgington, Planetary Scientist
Cassini-Huygens: Mission to Saturn & Titan
Yes, Asia, John Wetton Fan
Edited by jupiterzkool (08/08/08 11:06 PM)
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Treehopper
sage
Reged: 07/29/08
Posts: 215
Loc: Upstate NY
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Quote:
Will they have to rotate the spacecraft to keep the imager pointed at one spot?
This link is to Cassini's engineering blog, and has an excellent preview/explantion of what the flyby will be like.
The quick answer is, they'll be rotating the visual array away from the moon on its inbound leg, so that as they do the flyby, the sensors will be facing the south polar region where they want to image the plume region. There's a nice little animation on the above link that illustrates what the flyby will look like, as well as the orientation of the instruments.
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Tim
Third oak on the right, and straight on 'til morning.
Meade ETX-125PE (NGC7000 Edition)
When I consider thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained;
What is man, that thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
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Matthew Ota
sage
Reged: 04/30/05
Posts: 203
Loc: New Hampshire
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Run CASSIE and you can see for yourself how the spacecraft will orient itself during the flyby:
CASSIE
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Matthew Ota
10 inch Meade LX250GPS SCT (LX50/LX200GPS clone) f6.3-Orion 80ED, ETX-90 OTA, Coronado Helios 1 H-alpha Solar Telescope
Cassini Huygens Saturn Observation Campaign
New Hampshire Astronomical Society
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TomC10
sage
Reged: 12/21/04
Posts: 239
Loc: Land of Enchantment
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OK, I'm looking forward to seeing the results tomorrow. 
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Tom C
C10 NGT
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jupiterzkool
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 05/08/06
Posts: 1341
Loc: Pasadena, CA
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The raw images and several press releases have been posted to the public image website. Cool stuff. Enjoy!
-S
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Scott G. Edgington, Planetary Scientist
Cassini-Huygens: Mission to Saturn & Titan
Yes, Asia, John Wetton Fan
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TomC10
sage
Reged: 12/21/04
Posts: 239
Loc: Land of Enchantment
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Wow, not a single crater, but there does seem to be a lot of strain on the surface. Saturn's gravity must be kneading this little world like bread dough.
On Rev 80 Shoot #5 the large faults don't flood adjacent terrain, but there is an ash on the slopes of the faults that is beginning to cover the adjacent surface. Geyser fallback? This looks like an alligator's hide, very strange.
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Tom C
C10 NGT
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jupiterzkool
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 05/08/06
Posts: 1341
Loc: Pasadena, CA
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The entire south pole is devoid of craters. I would imagine that a portion of the geyser materials falls back onto the surface to cover them over. I am waiting for the thermal maps, but this will take several days to process.
-S
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Scott G. Edgington, Planetary Scientist
Cassini-Huygens: Mission to Saturn & Titan
Yes, Asia, John Wetton Fan
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llanitedave
Humble Megalomaniac
Reged: 09/26/05
Posts: 10474
Loc: Amargosa Valley, NV, USA
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I think it's more than just a cover, Scott. Looks to me like there is so much recent compression and wrinkling in that portion of the crust that any older craters would have been squeezed and smeared out of existance.
Lots of boulders in the closeups, too. I would think they're too big too be fallback, but if they are, there must be some incredible forces blasting out through the faults.
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"S.O.E." (Sauron's Other Eye) 16" Royce conical mirror: A permanent work in progress.
10" Homebuilt dob, old Coulter mirror
Next Project: The "Eye of Sauron" Observatory!
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jupiterzkool
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 05/08/06
Posts: 1341
Loc: Pasadena, CA
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You can sense the excitement at the Enceledus flyby blog. And there is more to come: our next Enceledus flyby is on Oct 9th.
-S
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Scott G. Edgington, Planetary Scientist
Cassini-Huygens: Mission to Saturn & Titan
Yes, Asia, John Wetton Fan
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groz
professor emeritus
Reged: 03/14/07
Posts: 541
Loc: Duncan, BC
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So, I went and scrolled back thru the 'last 500 raw images' at the mission website, some fascinating stuff there. There isn't much in the way of craters in the polar region, but, there's plenty of them on other parts of that moon. I suspect that's going to provide plenty of 'food for speculation' over the next few years.
But, as I went farther back in the raw images, I noticed a lot of the shots approaching enceledus seem to have an issue with interlacing on the right side of the frame, here's one example.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGFullS43/N00118353.jpg
Is this an issue with one of the cameras? An artifact of the data tranmission bandwidth? Looking thru a bunch of the images, this seems to be a consistent artifact, but, I cant pinpoint a specific method to the consistency.
Does anybody know what's going on there ?
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jupiterzkool
Pooh-Bah
Reged: 05/08/06
Posts: 1341
Loc: Pasadena, CA
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The raw images will show the interlacing effect from time to time. It depends on the compression rates that the imaging team chose to use. Once processed through the imaging calibration software, this will be corrected.
-S
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Scott G. Edgington, Planetary Scientist
Cassini-Huygens: Mission to Saturn & Titan
Yes, Asia, John Wetton Fan
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