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Grand Tour Saturn and the Icy Satellites

Posted: 06.03.2022, 23:40
by Shadow-Dragon-777
Saturn is the most iconic planet in the Solar System after Earth. It's rings have fascinated astronomers since their discovery in the 17th century by Galileo. It is known that Saturn also hosts arguably the Solar System's most intriguing moon, Titan. I have covered Titan in another addon dedicated to it.
GRAND TOUR TITAN

Titan is not the only round thing orbiting Saturn. Along with it's rings and Titan are several satellites each with their own interesting things going on.

Mimas is egg-shaped and has a crater so large, it looks like the Death Star!

Enceladus is perhaps most famous of these secondary moons for its cryovolcanoes. The possibility of life on this moon s so significant the Cassini mission was deorbited rather than risk contaminating it. The volcanoes are caused by a resonance with Dione.

Enceladus.png
Enceladus with its cracks


Tethys resembles a cyclops eye with Odysseus. It's opposite side features fractures from the impact that caused it.

Dione is crisscrossed by fractures all over. These fractures are perhaps among the youngest features on it's surface and could imply continued tectonic activity

Dione.png
Dione with its fractures in high resolution


Rhea is very old, it may lack geologic activity though evidence indicates it may have had rings of its own or still does.

Iapetus is a bizarre object. It is covered in scars from several impacts large enough to have almost shattered it while its leading side is coated in a rust colored material and its equator has a mountain range twice as tall as Mount Everest.

Iapetus.png
Distant Iapetus with it's two toned coloration, ridge of mountains, and Saturn in the background. The monolith might as well be on this thing.


Of small things, Phoebe is a relic centaur captured by Saturn, Helene looks like a cropped image of the top of a glacier, and Methone looks like an egg.

This addon contains:
16K Saturn Rings
8K Mimas
16K Enceladus
2K Enceladus normalmap
16K Tethys
16K Dione
16K Rhea
16K Iapetus
16K Iapetus normalmap
4K LOK Phoebe, including south pole data left out in publications
4k Helene made by scientists
2K Methone made by scientists
1K Janus imagery made by scientists
2K Prometheus imagery made by scientists

In addition, there are several dozen alternate textures.

CLICK HERE TO ENHANCE YOUR SATURN SYSTEM EXPERIENCE!!!

Saturn Rings.png
Saturn Rings with Pandora shepherding the F Ring

Posted: 07.03.2022, 11:58
by trappistplanets
where are the other icy minors (you could use my maps for them unless you want maps to be made from real eggheads)

Posted: 07.03.2022, 12:09
by Shadow-Dragon-777
They don't have findable maps made by scientists. The scientists who analyze the data, make shape models, and map them. Egghead data is the best data for accuracy.

Posted: 07.03.2022, 13:16
by trappistplanets
Shadow-Dragon-777 wrote:They don't have findable maps made by scientists. The scientists who analyze the data, make shape models, and map them. Egghead data is the best data for accuracy.
so your going to leave them blank?

Added after 6 minutes 28 seconds:
Shadow-Dragon-777 wrote:They don't have findable maps made by scientists. The scientists who analyze the data, make shape models, and map them. Egghead data is the best data for accuracy.
stook does have a epimetheus map from voyager data
Epimetheus Stooke.jpg


there is this janus map (not sure if stooke or somebody else made it, but its just voyager data
janusmap.jpg


it really annoys me no maps of these worlds were made from cassini data, hence why i made my maps (reprojected using thomas 2018 meshes and blender)

Added after 1 minute 43 seconds:
also, i thought there was a hyperion map
found this one from voyager(?) data https://solarviews.com/cap/sat/hyperionmap.htm
i am pretty sure JohnVV made one from cassini data

Posted: 07.03.2022, 14:48
by Shadow-Dragon-777
The Phil Stooke voyager maps are already in the vanilla Celestia install.

Posted: 07.03.2022, 15:56
by trappistplanets
Shadow-Dragon-777 wrote:The Phil Stooke voyager maps are already in the vanilla Celestia install.
they need better maps, like seriously, after many years there are no cassini maps of these moons, only ones that i know of are some stooke maps (but there voyager) and my maps (in the case for helene and methone, there are egghead maps)

Posted: 14.08.2022, 20:40
by Shadow-Dragon-777
Updated the addon with brightness corrected textures, imagery for Janus and Prometheus, a plethora of alternate textures, and a normal map for Iapetus.