You need to upgrade your Flash Player The theme of this blog is not only and obviously space, but in particular “terrestrial worlds”, places that tend to have surfaces on which one could walk or at least attach oneself to. These places sometimes also have other earth-like familiar features such as atmospheres, weather, volcanos, geysers and perhaps, we are finding, even exotic oceans, rivers or lakes that are not necessarily made of familiar materials we are used to here at home. The second theme is imagery. Occasionally I do some retouching of images when needed if an image is incomplete or sometimes “dirty” or noisy. I will attempt to correct image shortcomings based upon other images or well-accepted presumed attributes. When this is done, notes will be offered as to what was added, why and sometimes how it was done. This way no one should ever wonder if something they are looking at is real or photoshop.

Archive for the 'Tethys' Category

Tethys and Saturnian Rings

Wednesday, September 10th, 2008

Tethys and Saturnian Rings

Gordan’s reworking of images taken October of 2005. Strikingly gorgeous. I think we have at least one impressive dramatic color image of each of Saturn’s major moons with Saturn or its rings as backdrop at this point.

1. Mimas
2. Enceladus
3. Dione
4. Tethys (this one)
5. Rhea
6. Titan

Saturnati XIV

Wednesday, March 26th, 2008

Saturnati XIV

Its Titan up top and Tethys below.

Cassini Team Shows Some Color

Tuesday, October 16th, 2007

NASA released an unusually large amount of color images to the Cassini website recently. Most of what is shown here on this site are actually images put together by freelance imagers who access the raw files and do some stitching together of filtered images. Color images coming straight off the Cassini website are a rare event, so when about 8 appeared in the gallery a few days ago… it was an unexpected gift.

The Unlit Saturn
Saturn as seen from the unlit side of the rings.

The Saturn System
A family portrait of the Saturn System. Moons visible in this image (you need to click the preview) are Dione at far left, Enceladus near the left side ring edge, Mimas a speck on ring shadows on the western limb, Rhea against the northern hemisphere, Tethys near the right ring edge, and Titan near lower right.

Titan, Epimethius and the RIngs
Titan and a small moonlet named Epimetheus share the frame with Saturn’s rings.

Titan on the Edge
A rare color view of both Saturn and Titan in one frame. This is the only one of its kind thus far in the mission.

Rainbow in the Rings
A small rainbow appears as sunlight streams through Saturn’s rings.

Wallpapers: 1024×768 Set 05

Saturday, August 4th, 2007

1024x768_set05

Managed to make the more common wallpaper size 1024×768 for the 14 most recent wallpaper posts (started with set 05 images, 1-4 to come). Download zip file here. Some were not produced as they just didn’t translate so easily into the format. However, the opposite is true in some cases such as for this image of the Martian south pole. Its resolution was hopelessly low for the larger landscape format, so now with the smaller size it was possible (just barely) to get it posted as a wallpaper.

Wallpaper 1024x786: Martian South Pole

Included in the set for download are the images pictured at the top and for the sake of google search, here they are listed out:

  • 1024×768 Wallpaper of CALLISTO at half view, moon of JUPITER
  • 1024×768 Wallpaper of EARTH from APOLLO landing site
  • 1024×768 Wallpaper portrait of EUROPA, moon of JUPITER
  • 1024×768 Wallpaper portrait of JUPITER
  • 1024×768 Wallpaper of MARS region of DEUTERONILUS (not shown)
  • 1024×768 Wallpaper of MARS surface at HUSBAND HILL
  • 1024×768 Wallpaper portrait of MARS
  • 1024×768 Wallpaper portrait of PHOEBE, moon of SATURN
  • 1024×768 Wallpaper portrait of RHEA, moon of SATURN
  • 1024×768 Wallpaper of SATURN, crescent view (not shown)
  • 1024×768 Wallpaper of SATURN from above the NORTHERN POLE
  • 1024×768 Wallpaper of SATURN globe
  • 1024×768 Wallpaper of SPACE WALK
  • 1024×768 Wallpaper portrait of TETHYS, moon of SATURN

Active Bodies List: Dione and Tethys

Wednesday, June 13th, 2007

For those keeping score… the active bodies in the Solar System list may now include Dione and Tethys at Saturn. See article here - spacespin.org.

Wallpaper: Tethys Portrait

Wednesday, February 7th, 2007

Wallpaper: Tethys Portrait

One of the mid-sized moons of Saturn, Tethys, is thought to be composed almost entirely of water ice. Its most remarkable features are Odysseus, a 400 km wide crater and the Ithaca Chasma a 2,000 km long valley that runs across 2/3 of Tethy‘s globe. Those features are not visible in this image, but what is visible is the slight color variation which almost appears as a “dusting” of color on a largely grey body. A curious feature especially considering the radical color variation found at Iapetus. Perhaps this discoloring is a more subtle result of the same event which caused the strange color variation on Iapetus?

Image Processors on Flickr: Gordan Ugarkovic

Friday, December 29th, 2006

Gordan Ugarkovic has a great collection of reworked Cassini images on Flickr. I contacted Gordan about showing some of his images here on wanderingspace and he was ever so gracious. As many people Gordan is “somewhat underwhelmed by the frequency the Cassini Imaging Team releases color composites”, so it is up to excellent freelancers like him to compile this information from the data files which are made public by NASA. Problem is that these images rarely make it to the mass media and we are stuck with the dozen or so color images the NASA imaging teams decide to produce in a year.

Wallpaper: Europa and the Eye of Jupiter

Wallpaper: Saturn’s Rings and Three Moons

WALLPAPER NOTE: The left 1/3 of the “Three Moons” image was extended in Photoshop using data at the edges of the original image which was cropped to a square format. This “fake” imagery was only applied to that area of the rings and the rest of the image including the moons is actual.

Here are some other images from Gordan which are some of my favorites, but don’t trust my editing… go to the gallery and have a look yourself. For the sake of posterity I have added a permanent link to his gallery on the right side of this blog where you may note that there are already a few others linked. There were two additional ones but the sites have been taken down since I linked to them?! Hopefully the three left will stick around for a while and I will in time add more to the collection.

Tethys on a Hazy Limb

Tethys and Saturn’s Hazy Limb

Mimas and Promethius on Rings

Mimas and Prometheus on Rings

Io on Jupiters Edge

Io on Jupiters Edge

Wallpaper: Tethys and Saturn

Saturday, November 25th, 2006

Wallpaper: Tethys and Saturn
The moon Tethys is pictured drifting across Saturn’s disc. Tethys is one of 3 medium sized moons (including Rhea and Dione) which are largely composed of ice with small amounts of rock and whose features consist mostly of craters. Tethys does have two outstanding features which are a huge 400km impact crater whose diameter is about 2/5 that of Tethys itself, as well as a giant 2000km valley that stretches across 3/4 of Tethys diameter.

IMAGE NOTE: This image was not altered other than extending Saturn’s rings to fill the page on the upper right side. The original image was in square format so the subtle ring outlines were more cropped than seen here.