On Sunday NASA (quietly?) posted video of the launch of STS-121 Discovery taken from cameras mounted on the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs). These videos are in Windows Media Player 9 format. For those of you on Macs (like me) I recommend the Flip4Mac WMV plugin for Quicktime — it’s free and works well.
In the first short video clip (1.31 MB) you see the SRB separation and the shuttle pulling away… magnificent! It’s like something out of a sci-fi movie.
screenshot
In this second much longer clip (156 MB) you ride the booster from launch all the way until splashdown in the ocean!!! The whole clip runs about 11 minutes. JUST FREAKING RIDICULOUSLY BREATHTAKING!!! It doesn’t get much better than this (OK so I’m a dork).
animated screenshot
So RUN — don’t walk — over to the NASA – Space Shuttle page and check them out! They’ve also got some sweet video coverage of the last space walk.
In the last few posts I’d created some animations out of raw Cassini images sequences. In my most recent post I mentioned wanting to see more animations from the folks that operate Cassini, if only for the “gee whiz” factor. It would seem the folks at JPL and the Space Science Institute have answered the call — or it’s just timely coincidence.
A News Release dated yesterday on the Cassini project website contains a handful of breathtaking animations of some of Saturn’s moons. I’d like to think my post had something to do with it, but either way I’m glad to see it. It’s really good stuff.
I leave you with this striking image of Enceladus occulting Titan.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
A complete description and a full resolution image can be found here.
Once again while browsing the latest raw images from Cassini, I noticed this image sequence. It was shot on June 10th with the camera pointed toward Enceladus which was approximately 3,911,272 kilometers away. Enceladus is the little black dot occulting Titan with the mid-point of the occultation occurring on June 10, around about 15:39 UT (best guess observing Enceladus from Cassini in Starry Nightâ„¢ Pro 5). I cropped and combined the images in Photoshop to create this short animation.
Why?
Well, because (at least for me anyway) seeing things in motion tends to fire my imagination. I hope I’m not alone here. I think it would behoove the folks that manage Cassini to point the camera at Saturn and image a complete orbit. Imagine the PR value of a big, beautiful, full-color animation of riding Cassini for a “stately” orbit of Saturn. I’m not talking one of those 30 second deals here, I’d like to see it over 5-10 mintues. I don’t know what science benefit such a thing could have — if any — but I’m sure someone somewhere could concoct a reasonable excuse to do it.
On an unrelated note, this year’s festivities have officially commenced here in the Sunshine State. Althouth I certainly don’t mind cashing in my “direct hit voucher” for a lowly tropical storm. Got my fingers crossed.
…but you only got to see it if you were riding the Cassini probe orbiting Saturn.
While browsing the latest raw images from Cassini, I found this image sequence shot on June 6th with the camera was pointed toward Enceladus which was approximately 3,904,788 kilometers away. Based on where Cassini was in it’s orbit I’m fairly certain the larger moon is Tethys, with the mid-point of the occultation occurring on June 6, around about 16:04 UT. I cropped and combined the images in Photoshop to create this short animation.
What confounded me at first was how we could be looking at almost the full night side of Enceladus and NOT Tethys. After looking at the orientation from a polar vantage point atop the Saturnian system I could see Tethys was about a quarter of the way into the sunward side of its orbit around Saturn. Enceladus was barely finishing the night side part it’s orbit. We are indeed seeing the night side of Tethys — lit by sunlight reflected off of Saturn.
