Rings of Saturn

[pino]

Is it possible to see in Celestia the rings of saturn with the different shape in the side lit by the sun (B ring bright, Cassini division and C ring dark) and in the side unlit (B ring dark, Cassini division and C ring bright, A ring translucent) ?
Thank you.
Pino

[maxim]

Obviously not.
I'm not shure how the rings are created exacly, but they seem to be some kind of flattend translucent planet (Perhaps one of the main developers knows better). You can also watch that they darken if you orbit the planet. Standing opposit to the sun, over the planets night-side the rings are also black. That's completely unnatural.

maxim.

[LeaderOne]

I think that the effect of the rings being invisible from the opposite side of the planet facing the sun is not entirely real but it has it's logic: the rings are composed of millions of particles, each of them being lit as small planets, so basically, when you turn around the parent planet, the illumination pattern of each should resemble it thus getting darker until they are black and no longer visible.
But it occurs that each of this particles reflects light onto the nearby ones, so even when you see the rings on the opposite side of the planet, some residual light should remain and let the rings be visible, although a fraction of the maximum.
I guess that's a difficult effect to implement in celestia right now; I'm just happy that at least the rings projects shadows over the planet. I hope somebody could implement rings for Neptune also

[granthutchison]

I hope somebody could implement rings for Neptune also

Coming up in the next release - I've added the Adams and LeVerrier rings, which are the only ones that are dense enough to be visible to the naked eye by reflected light.

The "dark" side of Saturn's rings, especially the more transparent sections, should light up with forward-scattered light from fine dust particles, which would have bluish cast. I guess the only way to implement such a thing would be to have two ring textures - one describing the rings in reflected light, one in transmitted light.

Grant

[LeaderOne]

That's good news! I hope the next release is here soon. I saw your saturn POVray movie (Dynamic lighting topic), and it looks as it should be, congratulations! I guess Celestia eventually will grow to the point that this effect can be implemented.

[Bob Hegwood]

Just so you know...

Troy Corbin Jr. created rings for Neptune from some of Bjorn Jonnson's work. I have the rings for Neptune, Saturn, Jupiter and Uranus *all* working on my machine.

Don't remember where I found these packages, but they are definitely out there somewhere.

Try a search using "Celestia," "Neptune" and "Rings" as the keywords.

Trying to help...

-Bob

[granthutchison]

Showing Jupiter's ring in Celestia is interesting, but unfortunately not very realistic - at its densest, the ring stops only about one in a million photons, so it's pretty much invisible in reflected light.
Hmmm ... Another reason to have separate reflected/transmitted ring textures. We could make a completely transparent Jovian ring that showed up faintly in forward-scattered light when viewed from the night side of the planet .

LeaderOne, I'm glad you liked the Saturn movie. Some day I'll redo it in a larger format.

Grant

[JackHiggins]

...
Another reason to have separate reflected/transmitted ring textures
...

Sounds like a great new feature - all the better to simulate those fantastic saturn ring flybys with!!

Surely we can't go calling the next version only 1.3.2 with all the proposed additions?!

[maxim]

I'm just happy that at least the rings projects shadows over the planet.

Yeah, that's another thing. If you zoom onto the planets shadow on the rings, they finally look like as if the Mayas had cluttered large pyramid blocks all over the planets horizont.