Anomalies approaching Saturn's moon Enceladus

Does anyone know what the moving background objects are in this series of 12 photos? The ones in the background that appear to go straight could be other moons. From what I can tell there are two, one directly to the left and one in the upper right corner, that look like they turn into Enceladus. I can't tell if the path they take or the angle of the camera is causing it. Just thought I'd get some opinions.

Here is the caption taken from a Boston.com story with a lot of cool pictures of Enceladus.

This sequence of 12 frames was taken over a span of about 45 minutes on March 12, 2008. In that brief time, Cassini covered almost 40,000 kilometers in its approach to a flyby encounter with Enceladus. The overexposure and smearing of the images gives a hint of the raw speed involved - 14.4 km/sec (or 32,211 mph). Shortly after this sequence, at its closest, Casini approached within 52 km (32.3 miles) of the surface of Enceladus. (NASA/JPL-Caltech) #

To be honest its looks like either screen artifacts, or maybe ice particles from enceledus itself, wouldint read too much into it.
Of course Im not discounting anything, they looked a bit suspicious to me when I first saw them, but I do think its nothing to get worked up about, Im currently looking through the close up images of enceledus to see if I can find anything^^

It's weird, sometimes i can see clear paths and movement and sometimes it's hard to pick up. A few more frames would be nice.

Holi crapoli, I take back wha I said, I just found something really weird, I dont know what to make of it, look in the foreground close to the camera lens, around the 6th or 7th frame, something flies in from the top left area, proceeds across a bit and kind of arcs down

looks like dust particles on the lens to me. If you look closely you can see that they stay with the lens.

Beautiful imaging. Thank you for finding and sharing.

Originally posted by 38181
looks like dust particles on the lens to me. If you look closely you can see that they stay with the lens.

I agree with you, there are clearly things that stay with the camera, but take a look where I described a few posts back, it looks like it turns, the closest thing I can compare it to is a flying rod.

Here you have all the individual images, it may be easier that way.














If you are talking about the small white dots, I think they are camera noise.

Thanks so much for the frames ArmaP, I was just doing that^^, now you can clearly see what Im talking about coming in at the 6th frame.
Any ideas?

reply to post by Outlawstar


It would be easier if you could point to what you are talking about, I do not understand what is that you see.

Ok now I can see what they are seeing, its on frames 6,7,and 8. Its the fuzzy transparent "ghost fart" that moves from the upper left corner at an agle towards the moon, and I can only see it in those 3 frames.

It could be a particle of ice close up to the camera as to be out of focus. IMO

[edit on 25-10-2008 by 38181]

Originally posted by 38181
Ok now I can see what they are seeing, its on frames 6,7,and 8. Its the fuzzy transparent "ghost fart" that moves from the upper left corner at an agle towards the moon, and I can only see it in those 3 frames.

It could be a particle of ice close up to the camera as to be out of focus. IMO

[edit on 25-10-2008 by 38181]

Its visible in the 9th frame aswell, just left of the planets outline, and is clearly turning, Ill try and do something on PS to point it out to others.

[edit on 25-10-2008 by Outlawstar]

Yeah, the thing that arcs down is what I was noticing as well. It's rotation seems very precise, which may contribute to the dust on the lens if the satellite is turning. Thanks for posting the individual frames Armap.

I must be TOTALLY daft because I just see stars in the background of the moon.

[edit on 26-10-2008 by merka]

Normally I'd put that down to space debris of some sort, but as pointed out, in the 3rd frame it is visible in, it seems to change course basically straight down. Don't know of anything that changes course unless it is something controlled by intelligence. (And don't see how the moons 'gravity' would do that, not large enough - unless it is possible?)

Very Weird

Here you have them, the images where I could see something "different", with a strongish gamma correction to make them more visible.

Great job Armap, now the question is, WHAT THE HECK IS THAT!!!

Sorry guys...I'm not seeing it.

But I do notice that the probe changes its trajectory relative to the moon three times. Look at how the stars move and change motion relative to the camera. Also notice the "streaking" effect. That's not because anything is moving fast, that's caused by extremely long camera exposure times.

Under these conditions...I wouldn't be surprised if something odd were to appear.

Here's a more interesting thing, in my opinion. Look at the cropping of the left and right sides of the photos. Check the differences in cropping. You'd think one part of space would be just as good to show as another part.

Why the weird cropping?