Starship Asterisk*

bystander wrote:

CASSINI MISSION
by cabbas

I truly enjoy outer space. It's absolutely amazing that we now have the ability to send instruments out into the void of the universe to observe all sorts of interesting things. Asteroids! Moons! Planets! Dark matter! This is the perfect opportunity for a Carl Sagan quote:

"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."

The footage in this little film was captured by the hardworking men and women at NASA with the Cassini Imaging Science System. If you're interested in learning more about Cassini and the on-going Cassini Solstice Mission, check it out at NASA's website:

saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/​science/​index.cfm

Music by: Nine Inch Nails

I truly enjoy outer space. It's absolutely amazing that we now have the ability to send instruments out into the void of the universe to observe all sorts of interesting things. Asteroids! Moons! Planets! Dark matter! This is the perfect opportunity for a Carl Sagan quote:

"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."

The footage in this little film was captured by the hardworking men and women at NASA with the Cassini Imaging Science System. If you're interested in learning more about Cassini and the on-going Cassini Solstice Mission, check it out at NASA's website:

saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/​science/​index.cfm

Music by: Nine Inch Nails

• Cassini at Saturn, the Movie
  Universe Today | 2011 June 02
  
  The stark beauty of Cassini’s Saturn
  Bad Astronomy | 2011 June 02
  
  When Cassini Met Nine Inch Nails
  Discovery News | 2011 June 02

stephenv2 wrote:Thanks to all for the kind words. Just a couple of quick updates. First, I received a signed Saturn poster from the members of the Cassini Navigation Team - that was a real thrill and honor as without their years of work, nothing like this would be possible.

Second, working on something similar with Messenger data for another section the film.

bystander wrote:

astrogreek wrote:did Cassini really pass through the rings

Cassini crosses the ring plane twice every orbit, sometimes passing directly through it. See: Cassini: The Great Crossing

For those that wish to make derogitory comments on the work presented, try to reproduce the effort yourselves. The programs to do so are out there. If you can come up with something better, post it here.

hackerspiff wrote:The sentiment is nice, and the images are cool, but the video is not factually sound. Cassini does not fly the fantastical trajectories depicted by the animation and NASA generally doesn't fly spacecraft through the dense part of the rings. In fact, I don't believe Cassini ever passed through the rings, am I right?

Moreover, the moons aren't depicted to proper scale with the imagined flight path. They are really just shrunken icons pasted onto a single backdrop of a small number of Saturn images. "Motion" is simply a lot of image scaling.

I would expect a little more scientificly informative out of an APOD page.

Guest wrote:I'm the filmmaker....

Very honored to have my clip chosen. For the questions so far - this is an art film about space exploration. It's also a work-in-progress clip. This is not the path Cassini followed obviously - creating the motion is far more complicated than stringing a series of images together. The path was chosen by me but all the images are from the spacecraft.

The real challenge though was creating it at this high resolution (32 times HiDef) for IMAX screens as Cassini takes 1024 x 1024 images - some of the composites used in this shot are 10,000 x 10,000 pixels. The processing takes place in 32-bit color which mean each frame is over 1 gigabyte of pixel data at 24 frames per second. What you are seeing here is very low rez even at 1080p.

Per the music, it's a strong choice and usually provokes a strong reaction, pro or con. But the emotion of the music is designed to work for this section of the film.

Thanks again to APOD for featuring and very nice to hear all the compliments here.

stephen

Guest wrote:

gvannucci wrote:

Redbone wrote:As others have mentioned, a lot of artistic freedom here. The moons do not move as we approach Saturn, Saturn does not rotate, which makes the movie seem less realistic. Still very cool.

This movie looks to me like a missed opportunity to show what Cassini's approach would have looked like.

If the Cassini team had taken my suggestions, it could have been done but they claim "science" is more important

Unfortunately, image data for that approach does not exist anyway - so it could only happen with CGI. The arrangement and placement of the moons is roughly correct. But the Cassini cameras have very long focal lengths and this is a crop/pan & scan of the IMAX 4:3 frame - thus the motion is a bit strange at times. Note, this was just a first footage clip I uploaded 10 months ago and had no idea would end up widely seen.

hackerspiff wrote:NASA generally doesn't fly spacecraft through the dense part of the rings. In fact, I don't believe Cassini ever passed through the rings, am I right?

Moreover, the moons aren't depicted to proper scale with the imagined flight path. They are really just shrunken icons pasted onto a single backdrop of a small number of Saturn images. "Motion" is simply a lot of image scaling.

I would expect a little more scientificly informative out of an APOD page.

astrogreek wrote:did Cassini really pass through the rings

Mortus wrote:I can't be the only one that saw the Death Star at 1:33.

APOD Robot wrote:Cassini is next depicted flying over Mimas, with large Herschel Crater clearly visible.