JAXA sets up its Selene YouTube page. Lots of moon videos like the one above, which has been sped up and converted to a gif here (showing only about 1 of every 20 frames). See the full animation here.

Yes, another movie of Prometheus disturbing Saturn’s rings. This is the longest clip and includes the most ring swinging action for your money. This version has been cropped and reduced down from the original. See here for a larger, wider view of the same animation (2M gif).

How do I not see these things? This was from back in 2006. I don’t recall ever hearing of this. It is an IMAX on the two Mars rover missions Spirit and Opportunity. Coincidentally, Paul Newman who passed recently apparently had something to do with it as well. I assume narration.

Its been a while since I have updated the progress on IMAX in a Basement, which features imagery from the Cassini mission. See youTube for a nice “Problems Solved” video that includes a sweet sweep across what looks like Enceladus toward Saturn.

Too few images come from the Venus Express mission. Probably has something to do with its featurelessness. The only way to see this level of detail in the Venusian clouds is by using alternative flase-color imaging. These frames were taken in ultraviolet light.

Cassini moves away from it’s risky encounter at Enceladus… This came out so cool that it looks fake.

IMAGE NOTE: 3 frames of this 13 frame animation were “faked” in that adjacent frames were used to fill in gaps. The size and position of Enceladus was simply adjusted on these frames to create a smoother transition where needed. Additionally, the last 3 frames had stars added to the background for consistency.

Check out this great animation found on the internet a while back that was compiled from images taken by the Cassini probe as it flew by Jupiter at the tail end of 2000. It used to be hosted at a U.S. astrogeology site which no longer exists and the animation was credited to Paul Geissler. Those glowing dots are active volcanoes. At the very end there is a blast of light from a crescent Io coming into view. The features are strikingly similar to those of the “dark side” image of Io published here during the New Horizons encounter, including the “auroral displays in Io’s tenuous atmosphere interacting with Jupiter’s magnetosphere”.

NOTE: The animation was cleaned up a bit by wanderingspace.net just for presentation purposes. This mostly included increasing the canvas size, removing all the surrounding noise and darkening the disc of Io itself.

Prometheus disturbing the F-Ring as it passes. We have seen this animated before, but perhaps not from such a vantage point.

A while back wanderingspace posted 2 great animations of the Mariner flybys of Mars. They had a great nickelodeon feel to them and are two of the best posts on this blog (in our opinion). So when Emily Lackdawalla posted recently on the first “earthrise” as seen from a probe in orbit around the moon – she linked to this great database of moon shot mission images from the 60’s. Glimpsing at these collections, it was clear that there existed the same potential for another nickelodeon style animation of a trip to the moon.

The mission shown above is Ranger IX and there are many more potential animations that can be made from other Ranger missions or from the Lunar Orbiter series of images. Maybe one day.

Sorry for the huge file size… about 1M.

Thank you JAXA. Last time we saw something like this was round about 1974… If you want a peek at one of the HiDef movies being shot by Kaguya see this link here.

There have been some nice NASA animations of the interaction between some “shepard” moons and the rings, but this has to be the most impressive. There are some blank frames in there for gaps in the data… but the effect is still easy to follow.

The Ron Howard documentary “In the Shadow of the Moon”, came to theaters on September 7th. How did I miss this? See the trailer here.

Officially this site’s most mentioned personality, Gordan Ugarkovic does it again with a series of color images combined to show an hour at Saturn. In addition to this being a gorgeous animation, the very image of Saturn and Titan in the same frame has thus far, in and of itself, been quite a rarity in the Cassini mission. The other moon visible in the shot is Dione.

Original image appears on the unmannedspaceflight forum.

Not totally sure what this film will be like, but the potential of someone using the best imagery of the Cassini mission to create 3 dimensional environments set to music seems quite exciting. There’s not a ton of animation on the site, but what there is seems pretty good (despite the numerous screen shots of the back of someone’s head watching various pop stars?!). The above image is a still sample of what one would hope would represent the majority of what might be coming. Go to outsideinthemovie.com and check out the clips in the WATCH section, especially the “Basement IMAX” one which explains part of what he is attempting. But in order to make it happen, it seems donations are in order. Open up your wallet and help make it happen or take part in the process by submitting some images of yourself as requested by the creator (see the SUPPORT section).

Image Note: According to the film maker, “There is no computer-generated imagery in the film. No 3D models, no texture-mapping or any other rendered data. The only thing that has been done is taking many actual photos (including some high resolution mosaics) and using some very special and computer-intensive processing to create the feeling of depth and movement”.

Similar… no?