New Enceladus texture from Ciclops map

[abramson]

Hi, all. I have made a rather nice Enceladus surface texture based on Ciclops August map, and colorized to match Ciclops "natural color" images. It can be downloaded as an add-on package form my webpage in the form of a zipfile. There is a readme and references included, together with 4K, 2K and 1K textures. I am attaching the reademe file and the 1K jpg file here. Enjoy.

Guillermo

ENCELADUS FROM CASSINI IMAGES

This is a high resolution surface texture of Saturn's moon Enceladus, based on the map released on 6 August 2008 by Ciclops (http://ciclops.org). See Map of Enceladus - Ciclops.txt for details about the map, which is based on Cassini and Voyager images. Follow the url file to visit Ciclops release.

The subtle color is derived from Cassini images that Ciclops reports as close to natural colors (http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=931 and http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=5200). It is much less saturated than equivalent Voyager pictures (and the official Celestia as of version 1.5.1).

Enceladus is extremely reflective and would appear as snow to the naked eye. This map contains much detail, contrast and color would be impossible to see in that way. Think of it as a view of Enceladus through neutral sunglasses.

According to Ciclops, there is a shift to the west compared to the previous version, to comply with the IAU definition of longitude of the satellite.

The 4k texture is a blow-up of the original 3600 one. It just looks much more the original than the 2k one. You may just delete it if you wish.

INSTALLATION
Unzip the contents of the zip file inside the Extras folder of Celestia. You may use a subfolder of Extras, also (e.g. Extras/SolarSystem/Saturn/Enceladus). Celestia will find it.

USAGE
On Celestia, go to Enceladus. Right click and select Alternate Surfaces, and choose Enceladus (Ciclops). Celestia will choose either the 4k, 2k or 1k versions, depending on your current resolution setting (change with r and R).

ALTERNATIVE USAGE
If you prefer to replace Dione default surface with this one, edit enceladus-ciclops.ssc and uncomment (remove the #) from the line with the Modify directive, and comment (add a #) in front of the AltSurface one.

CREDITS
This texture is Ciclops' map of Enceladus as of 6th Audust 2008. Adapted for Celestia by Guillermo Abramson (http://cabfst28.cnea.gov.ar).
Find about Celestia at http://celestiaproject.net/celestia.

[John Van Vliet]

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[abramson]

Thanks, John. I have seen it. The PDS's contains less detail (though much more resolution!) than the August Ciclops map. Ciclops may be an orbit ahead, I presumed. I wrote to them but I had no answer yet. Things will continue to change as Cassini goes on around Saturn, also.

Guillermo

[ElChristou]

Would be interesting to do a bridge between the Ciclops guys and Celestia community...

[abramson]

Here's the current PDS map, downsized to 1K. Note what I meant before, regarding detail. This must be from a previous orbit than Ciclop's August (it's dated April 2008). There's also the western shift to comply with IAU. PDS will eventually publish the new map, I presume. A 2K map is neverthless much better than the current Celestia Enceladus, which is based on Voyager images, I believe.

Guillermo

[scalbers]

Guillermo, nice to see more work being done with the Enceladus imagery. For comparison, I've recently updated my Enceladus map that includes data from August as seen here:

http://laps.noaa.gov/albers/sos/sos.html#ENCELADUS

I hope to do further refinements with adding detailed color and slight renavigation. There's also the upcoming encounter to consider in a few days...

Steve