General / Off-Topic Cassini - Utterly mind blowing images.

Steve O B Have

Steve O B Have
Source: http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/10/saturn_at_equinox.html

From 20 degrees above the ring plane, Cassini's wide angle camera shot 75 exposures in succession for this mosaic showing Saturn, its rings, and a few of its moons a day and a half after exact Saturn equinox, when the sun's disk was exactly overhead at the planet's equator. The images were taken on Aug. 12, 2009, at a distance of approximately 847,000 km (526,000 mi) from Saturn. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
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Rays of light from the sun have taken many different paths to compose this image of Saturn and its rings. This view looks toward the unilluminated (north) side of the rings and, at the top of the image, the night side of Saturn. Sunlight has been reflected off the illuminated side of the rings to light the planet's southern hemisphere, seen here as a bright band of yellow-orange. The northern hemisphere, in the top left corner of the image, is dimly lit by light diffusely scattered through the rings. The planet's shadow cuts across the rings, but light reflected off the southern hemisphere backlights parts of the C ring, making them visible in silhouette. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) #
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The moon Prometheus and its nearby disturbance of Saturn's F ring. Prometheus periodically gores the F ring, drawing out streamers of material from the ring. The image was taken in visible light at a distance of approximately 950,000 km (590,000 mi) from Saturn. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) #
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This animated series of images of Saturn's F Ring was acquired by Cassini on June 10, 2009. Shepherd moons Prometheus (inner) and Pandora (outer) pass by, alternately smoothing and disturbing the particles that make up the ring. Kinks, knots, wakes and disturbances are apparent in the thin ring as it rotates. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) #
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Steve O B Have

Steve O B Have
Plumes of tiny ice particles being ejected from the surface of the moon Enceladus are visible in the scattered sunlight in this image, acquired by Cassini on October 13, 2009. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) #
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Jagged looking shadows stretch away from vertical structures of ring material created by the moon Daphnis, a bright dot (8 km, or 5 mi across) casting a thin shadow just to the left of the center of the image. The moon has an inclined orbit, and its gravitational pull perturbs the orbits of the particles of the A ring forming the Keeler Gap's edge and sculpting the edge into waves having both horizontal (radial) and out-of-plane components. These scenes are possible only during the few months before and after Saturn's equinox, which occurs only once in about 15 Earth years. This image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 26, 2009, at a distance of approximately 823,000 km (511,000 mi) from Daphnis. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) #
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Another view of waves in the edges of the Keeler gap in Saturn's A ring, created by the embedded moon Daphnis. Image acquired on July 11, 2009, at a distance of approximately 496,000 km (308,000 mi) from Daphnis. (NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute) #
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Sir.Tj

The Moderator who shall not be Blamed....
Volunteer Moderator
Sir.Tj
Steve O B Have said:
Wouldn't it be cool to fly your ship along the surface of the rings and have it kick up a shockwave behind it...
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Very, Very Cool indeed.:cool:

Fantastic pictures there Steve.

Really like the picture of ice particles being ejected from the surface of the moon Enceladus, looks stunning.
 

DraQ

D
Steve O B Have said:
s08_PIA11547.jpg

s09_PIA11571.jpg
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:eek: Chalk up another one for the universe in the "universe VS imagination match". My conviction that E4 should be pedantic about being astronomically correct has just grown even stronger.

Eat that, "our spacesim has beyootiful tutti-frutti nebulae, space-fog and a lot of bloom" guys.

Steve O B Have said:
Wouldn't it be cool to fly your ship along the surface of the rings and have it kick up a shockwave behind it...
Click to expand...
Nah, your ship would be way too small and light to do this (dynamically disturbing clouds and water should suffice).
Still, shepherd moons should be simple to generate procedurally in the galaxy and hand-code in known space, so this shouldn't be an infrequent sight in E4 - imagine approaching a gap in the ring with small pebble surounded by almost stationary waves in the middle.
Imagine that this pebble turns out to be a moon - an entire landscape the size of Mt. Everest (sadly, big moons can't do this kind of thing, but it's all for the better - 8km is more than enough to awe with it's scale, but still small enough to be imagined, just put in some objects, like ships, for reference - a bigger moon would have much less impact) sitting in the middle of gap, in between waves, each many km high.
Imagine the flurry of rock and ice fragments those fuzzy waves turn out to be made of when you fly close enough to them.

Imagine the expression on the face of the player used to the inanity of the usual tutti-frutti nabulae. x]

Pan_side_view.jpg

Another of Saturn's shepherd moons, this one is about 30km in diameter.

Of course, it'd work best if there were missions taking you to such picturesque phenomena and places (handcoded and generated ones) and if the player was hammered with some stunning (but far from the best the game has to offer - it's important) right from the start. I don't think any of us should lecture DB about importance of starting the game with a good spectacle - he's the one who coded Ross 154 in FE2, made it the default starting point, then fine tuned everything so that the first thing player has ever seen in game was a ringed giant above the cloudy, day lit skies.
 
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Steve O B Have

Steve O B Have
DraQ said:
Nah, your ship would be way too small and light to do this (dynamically disturbing clouds and water should suffice).
Still, shepherd moons should be simple to generate procedurally in the galaxy and hand-code in known space, so this shouldn't be an infrequent sight in E4 - imagine approaching a gap in the ring with small pebble surounded by almost stationary waves in the middle.
Imagine that this pebble turns out to be a moon - an entire landscape the size of Mt. Everest (sadly, big moons can't do this kind of thing, but it's all for the better - 8km is more than enough to awe with it's scale, but still small enough to be imagined, just put in some objects, like ships, for reference - a bigger moon would have much less impact) sitting in the middle of gap, in between waves, each many km high.
Imagine the flurry of rock and ice fragments those fuzzy waves turn out to be made of when you fly close enough to them.

Imagine the expression on the face of the player used to the inanity of the usual tutti-frutti nabulae. x]
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I figured the same but surely some of the new ships in E4 will be of a substantial size enough that they can cause some sort of a disturbance to dust and stuff... Maybe that is asking too much from a game to have a planets rings that interactive :D

DraQ said:
Of course, it'd work best if there were missions taking you to such picturesque phenomena and places (handcoded and generated ones) and if the player was hammered with some stunning (but far from the best the game has to offer - it's important) right from the start. I don't think any of us should lecture DB about importance of starting the game with a good spectacle - he's the one who coded Ross 154 in FE2, made it the default starting point, then fine tuned everything so that the first thing player has ever seen in game was a ringed giant above the cloudy, day lit skies.
Click to expand...

You are right - I do remember that for the first time - exceedingly cool it was too...
 

DraQ

D
Steve O B Have said:
I figured the same but surely some of the new ships in E4 will be of a substantial size enough that they can cause some sort of a disturbance to dust and stuff...
Click to expand...
Nah, in the absence of air all you have isgravity, which is a function of mass distribution.
Even a large ship has not enough mass, though if you parked an LRC in a gap in the ring for some time, you might get *some* waves.

Maybe that is asking too much from a game to have a planets rings that interactive :D
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Nah, it's just I loathe cheap, physics violating drama. I'd welcome getting to make a kilometre-high wake-waves in clouds or on the surface of the sea. I wouldn't welcome the same waves in the planetary rings made by gravity of your craft alone. Similarly I find space-fog nebulae aggravating, and ship's reflection in the rings in ST: Voyager plain insulting in it's stupidity (not even physics,or astronomy, basic perspective and geometry - the ship would have to be *thousands* of kilometres across - from one nacelle to the other - to make this kind of thing even make sense).
 

Steve O B Have

Steve O B Have
DraQ said:
Nah, in the absence of air all you have isgravity, which is a function of mass distribution.
Even a large ship has not enough mass, though if you parked an LRC in a gap in the ring for some time, you might get *some* waves.
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Oh heh nah I get that - I did my fair share of physics in school so I understand the need for a medium with which to transfer energy. I was thinking on something a little more obvious like direct interaction/reaction between engine exhaust and particles/small objects. If you shunt a large piece of rock or debris into ring dust then you'd get an element of 'splash'.

DraQ said:
Nah, it's just I loathe cheap, physics violating drama. I'd welcome getting to make a kilometre-high wake-waves in clouds or on the surface of the sea. I wouldn't welcome the same waves in the planetary rings made by gravity of your craft alone. Similarly I find space-fog nebulae aggravating, and ship's reflection in the rings in ST: Voyager plain insulting in it's stupidity (not even physics,or astronomy, basic perspective and geometry - the ship would have to be *thousands* of kilometres across - from one nacelle to the other - to make this kind of thing even make sense).
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Well the actuall makeup and properties of the rings are still quite up for debate and is partially hypothetical however I think there is enough evidence to suggest that the reflective properties are not even close to mirror like.

This image suggestes that there is a 'dusty' element to the rings however are made up of masses of rock and ice of hugely varying sizes - still even if a chunk was bigger than a house, next to something like a LRC they'd be pretty small and with shield technology you'd be able to plow through them leaving something like a bow wave...
PIA08290_modest.jpg
 

Geraldine

Geraldine
Hi Steve
That picture of Saturn in the first post just screams FRONTIER!!!!
All it needs is a Space Station and a few Lynx Bulk Carriers hanging about. Beautiful pictures.
 

kaserei

kaserei
Old post but just found it today. You've made my sons day ... He's mad about Saturn and Jupiter.

He was 3 last month and had a moon shaped cake, coloured to look like Enceladus. He thought it was Titan though.
 

deMangler

deMangler
Utterly mind blowing is right. Good selection of images.
It is well worth searching the internet for Hubble images and NASA images in general. As someone who grew up in the '70s very interested in space I remember the first Voyager images being shown on TV. My mind is continually boggled by some of the stuff that is available now. Fantastic times we live in, in some ways.
 
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