Saturn at equinox, page 1
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Topic started on 20-10-2009 @ 07:01 AM by Ir0nM0nkey

Saturn at equinox


www.boston.com
Checking in with NASA's Cassini spacecraft, our current emissary to Saturn, some 1.5 billion kilometers (932 million miles) distant from Earth, we find it recently gathering images of the Saturnian system at equinox. During the equinox, the sunlight casts long shadows across Saturn's rings, highlighting previously known phenomena and revealing a few never-before seen images. Cassini continues to orbit Saturn, part of its extended Equinox Mission, funded through through September 2010.
(visit the link for the full news article)


reply posted on 20-10-2009 @ 07:44 AM by Moraz
Awesome pics, thanks for posting!



reply posted on 20-10-2009 @ 03:16 PM by Soylent Green Is People
Originally posted by Solidus Green eye
Some of the pics have the stars cut out again.
Cool photographs!


It's also possible that because of the relative brightness of the subject matter, the exposure time was too short to capture the light of the stars.

If I went outside on the starriest of starry nights and took a picture of a streetlight bulb, the camera would need to be set to a short exposure time to see the streetlight without "overexposing" the bulb. That short exposure would not be long enough for me to capture the light from the stars.

Perhaps if the exposure time was set long enough to see the stars in these photos, the subject matter (Saturn, its moons and its rings) may be so overexposed as to not see any detail.

If the subject matter happens to be a dim moon, then perhaps the stars would show, because the exposure time would be longer.

In fact, the one photo of Titan where the stars really show up even mentions that Titan was being eclipsed by Saturn -- and therefore in Saturn's dark shadow. Obviously the exposure time was long with that photo.

Although the first picture is said to be a mosaic of 72 smaller photos, so it is possible that for that one any stars that showed on the image were removed -- or else there may have been stars that showed up multiple times in the mosaic, creating a pattern that would have detracted from the beauty of the image.


EDIT TO ADD:
Beautiful pictures, by the way, OP!


[edit on 10/20/2009 by Soylent Green Is People]


reply posted on 20-10-2009 @ 04:13 PM by Solidus Green eye
reply to post by Soylent Green Is People



I checked the photographs in an picture editor, and I enhanced the lighting and the contrast. And you could clearly see that the stars were cut out.

I'll post the pics later on!
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