Beautiful images of Saturn.

Here are two pictures of Saturn taken yesterday 'Nov 27' by the Cassini spacecraft from a distance of about 380,000 kilometers. The first is of a feature called the north pole hexagon, this beautiful cloud structure is 25,000 kilometers wide, nearly twice as wide as earth.
The second image is a close up of the vortex at the centre of the hexagon.saturn.jpl.nasa.gov...

Very beautiful pictures indeed. Thank you for sharing with us.

Amazing images!

saturn.jpl.nasa.gov...
Any idea what the P0 and CB2 filters are? The first one is a polarizing filter, but the other is a "Continuum band 2", what does it mean?

P.S. never mind, found the answer in the FAQ saturn.jpl.nasa.gov...
CB2 is basically a red filter.

Thank you for sharing these amazing pictures there are truly beautiful S&F ...peace,sugarcookie1

reply to post by Atzil321


I think Saturn is so enigmatic. Have you ever checked out any of the 'Sounds of Saturn' vids on youtube?

Here's one:

Fantastic Pictures.
In the second close up picture of the north pole hexagon
it's interesting there are what look like miniature storms
that resemble Jupiters Red storm.
All running in a giant counter clockwise storm, yet with hexagonal borders.
Such incredibly different cloud/gas formations but the physics are similar as here on Earth .
As above so below.

So with massive storms appearing , it must mean they have 'global warming' on Saturn too...????

When I was in college I went to the university planetarium and looked at Saturn through their telescope, if I didn't know better I would have sworn that thing was a fake image or something, it looked totally ridiculous.

Gotta love that Hexagon on Saturn's pole.
Beautiful eh?

Here's a nice little conspiratorial video attempting to draw connections, felt compared to share it:



Enjoy

does anyone think about that 380,000kms is pretty much on the moon in relation to earth, and saturn is that big.. imagine travelling 25,000km/h for 16 hours when it looks like u could touch it from cassini... just jaw dropping stuff

Beautiful!

I'm really looking forward to the flyby of Titan in a little over 5 hours. Hopefully there's some more interesting stuff to come!!

Yay, I love space. In fact I want to be an astronaut when I'm older,.if there is a damn space program lol. Anyway great pictures I love them.

The hexagon part is way trippy, no way that is natural, not at that size. Though it wouldn't be a shocker if it was natural, nature tends to have a nice track record when it comes to awesomeness/craziness.

Wish they would be able to get a few closer pictures of it. One day...

awesome..

NASA and their black and white pic ..

reply to post by Atzil321

Especially that close up of the center of the whirlpool. Haven't seen that before. Those wispy tendrils of white cirrusy looking stuff... WoW, thats some storm. Wonder what is at the bottom of the funnel?

Great look see on an Alien world... thanks

reply to post by Atzil321

S+F for you mate. Beautiful images.

reply to post by Lostmymarbles


The hexagon is very common in the natural world. It's basically a circle squashed on all sides, so that it occupies the smallest possible area.

More links on the topic:
www.nasa.gov...
en.wikipedia.org...


Why these images are b&w? From the Cassini FAQ:

Why are so few of the Cassini pictures in color?

Creating color images is a complex task requiring much more labor and computer time than black and white images. This is because all Cassini images are recorded in black and white. The camera records the amount of light (not the color of the light) coming through a filter in front of the sensor. It is the filters that come in color.

To create color images scientists take three black and white images of the same target with the red, green, and blue (RGB) filters. In other words, one image records the amount of red light (using a red filter), another records the amount of green and one the amount of blue light (using green and blue filters respectively). Color renditions of the scene are then constructed on the ground by combining images taken with the different filters.

Unfortunately, these three images are not taken simultaneously. Consequently, intricate fitting and geometric transformations are needed to construct the color image because the spacecraft, planet, rings and moons have all moved a little during the time it takes to record the images using the different filters.

Originally posted by wildespace

Why are so few of the Cassini pictures in color?

Creating color images is a complex task requiring much more labor and computer time than black and white images.

Errrrrr .... why ? Since when does taking a colour pic become such a complex task ?
My smartphone takes brilliant, hi res pics with no effort at all.

Are you trying to tell me that the equivalent of a cheap smartphone colour capable cmos chip is impossible to mount on the craft and if it was, that it would be incapable of taking a real-time colour pic and then beam it back to Earth ?

C'mon ... really ???
Really ???

reply to post by tauristercus

Errrrrr .... why ? Since when does taking a colour pic become such a complex task ?
My smartphone takes brilliant, hi res pics with no effort at all.

Are you trying to tell me that the equivalent of a cheap smartphone colour capable cmos chip is impossible to mount on the craft and if it was, that it would be incapable of taking a real-time colour pic and then beam it back to Earth ?

C'mon ... really ???
Really ???

Taking a color picture has always been a complex task. You just take it for granted because you have never tried to understand how it is done. Even the lousy, low resolution camera in your cell phone uses either three different sensors or three different filters for each pixel. These filters are for primary colors that are pleasing to the human eye but useless for detecting the emission and absorption spectra of various elements. The instruments on spacecraft take pictures intended for such remote sensing.

Don't worry, someone will eventually take some of the most dramatic images taken in these scientifically interesting wavelengths and combine them to produce pretty "color" pictures.

reply to post by tauristercus


Believe me, I feel your pain, and have been wondering for a long time why is it so freaking hard to take normal colour images in space. But look at it this way: the purpose of this or any other spacecraft is science. Scientists can learn a lot more from a b&w image taken through specific filters than from an ordinary colour image. Spacecrafts are very expensive to build, launch, and use during their mission, so every bit of software, every electronic chip, and every use of energy and bandwidth has to be justified.

Curiosity rover on Mars is the first thing in space to systematically take true colour images. Hopefully, many future space missions will return lots of colour images.