Explanation: On April 26 the Cassini spacecraft swooped toward Saturn on the first of its Grand Finale dives between Saturn and rings. In this long, thin, noodle mosaic, a rapid series of 137 low resolution images captured by Cassini's wide-angle camera track its progress across the gas giant's swirling cloud tops. The mosaic projection maps the arc along Saturn's atmospheric curve on to a flat image plane. At top, the first mosaic panel is centered at 90 degrees north, about 72,400 kilometers above Saturn's dark north polar vortex. As the mosaic progresses it narrows, the pixel scale shrinking from 8.7 kilometers to 1 kilometer per pixel. For the last panel, the spacecraft is 8,374 kilometers above a region 18 degrees north of Saturn's equator. Frame orientation changes near the bottom as Cassini rotates to maneuver its large, dish-shaped, high-gain antenna forward, providing a shield before crossing Saturn's ring plane.
Interesting thread!. Cassini knit a "Needle" mosaic.
Curved.jpeg (2.72 KiB) Viewed 2863 times
Re: APOD: Noodle Mosaic of Saturn (2017 Jul 28)
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2017 3:41 pm
by steve wiggins
We should be having a discussion about the 70 pounds of plutonium that will soon be injected into Saturn's atmos(bio?)phere. After all, we were so careful to keep it out of our own planet's biosphere, yes?
Re: APOD: Noodle Mosaic of Saturn (2017 Jul 28)
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2017 4:10 pm
by neufer
steve wiggins wrote:
We should be having a discussion about the 70 pounds of plutonium that will soon be injected into Saturn's atmos(bio?)phere. After all, we were so careful to keep it out of our own planet's biosphere, yes?
If this APOD had shown the seventh planet instead of the sixth, we'd know what that large hole was.
Ann
Re: APOD: Noodle Mosaic of Saturn (2017 Jul 28)
Posted: Fri Jul 28, 2017 10:04 pm
by MarkBour
I'm wondering what that speck is at the upper left of the first frame.
It's interesting that they rotated Cassini with the high-gain antenna forward when passing the ring plane. For self-protection? Bah! I think they're hoping to catch a snowball with it.
Re: APOD: Noodle Mosaic of Saturn (2017 Jul 28)
Posted: Sat Jul 29, 2017 3:23 am
by neufer
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
MarkBour wrote:
It's interesting that they rotated Cassini with the high-gain antenna forward when passing the ring plane. For self-protection? Bah!
I think they're hoping to catch a snowball with it.
Noodle Mosaic of Saturn
