Saturn Image 2017/09/15(UT)
Paul Maxson,Clyde Foster
P.Maxson,C.Foster
| Paul Maxson |
Resized 1.25x.[ Paul Maxson:Surprise,Arizona,United States]
| Clyde Foster |
FAREWELL CASSINI The exploration of the universe around us, including the incredulous, and sometimes unbelievable, environments that we as humans are discovering, aided by these amazing pieces of hardware that have been developed, continues to fascinate. I do not consider it a matter of chance that, when I took up serious planetary and lunar imaging over the last three and a half years, I was attracted to three of the most fascinating planets: Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. To slowly learn the ins and outs of the atmospheric phenomena of these sister planets, in our own little corner of the universe, backed up by a stream of closeup information and images from the orbiters and rovers has been a wonderous journey of discovery. Long may it continue! I made a bold attempt yesterday afternoon to try and image Saturn as the Cassini impact time approached. I was able to (just) acquire the planet in brilliant sunshine, but in attempting to improve focus, I unfortunately lost acquisition and was unable to recover. I reverted to following the end of mission on NASA TV, and can only say that it was an incredibly emotional hour or so. Wonderful coverage of the event, and I do not know how the mission members were able to 塗old it all together・in the interviews. I am not ashamed to say that there were moments when I just cracked up and the tears flowed. The end of an amazing mission, and my congratulations and heartfelt thanks to the mission team that has supplied us with a continuous stream of mindblowing images from this beautiful, complex, and fascinating Saturnian system. I look forward to the ongoing stream of science that will result from the mission. The images attached were captured approximately six and a half hours after Cassini impact, but unfortunately the impact zone had already rotated out of view. I had a look at the configuration later in the evening, but by the time the impact zone would have rotated back into view, the planet would have been very low or even set, so this is the best I could do. The IR(685nm) data did not come out too badly. Best regards, Clyde
[Clyde Foster:Centurion,South Africa]
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Saturn Section
2017/09/16
| 2017/09/14
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