Updates in the Saturn system

[danielj]

What about the minor moons?
We have several images of Epimetheus,Janus,Prometheus,Hyperion and so on.Isn??t this enough to make new models and maps?Aside Phil Stooke,which is inactive,I would like to know if there is another minor body modeler and textures around there...

[t00fri]

What about the minor moons?
We have several images of Epimetheus,Janus,Prometheus,Hyperion and so on.Isn??t this enough to make new models and maps?Aside Phil Stooke,which is inactive,I would like to know if there is another minor body modeler and textures around there...

Daniel,

But THESE textures are from 2005!

First of all, some of my Saturn moons can be downloaded since quite some time also from our Celestial Matters WEB site:

http://www.celestialmatters.org/?page_id=41

There you find my

• 8k Iapetus from Jan 22 2006 ( NOT 2005!)
• 4k latest Titan
• 4k Tethys from Jan 15 2006 (NOT 2005!)

in many cases the data have NOT changed significantly during the last 1.5-2.5 years! E.g Phoebe. Iapetus only received new data input during the VERY recent flyby that you can see in my ongoing texture imaging:



There are also good reasons NOT to upgrate to 8k in case of Iapetus (since only small areas are up to this higher resolution...). Same for Titan. For visualization this would give quite an unpleasant impression, since the textures are looking VERY "inhomogeneous" this way.

Also Chris will NOT have 8k moon textures in Celestia for reasons of the download size . . NEITHER in a future official "Celestia hires pack".

What about the minor moons?

Smaller moons are often quite NON-spherical and thus require an experienced modelling expert besides the texture making. Also such non-round bodies are VERY tedious to do well...and free time is limited.


Bye Fridger

[Derek]

Which set of orbits is correct :
The ones used in nepsatnew.ssc and the nix/hydra ssc or the ones used in the "numberedmoons.ssc" as they differ quite dramatically when used with 1.5.0pre5.

[selden]

The most accurate are the ones which can be downloaded from the Celestia CVS archive on SourceForge right now. Knowlege of their orbital parameters has improved since the moons were discovered.

[Derek]

Thanks Selden

[John Van Vliet]

To quote "here were several developers that appears to be sleeping,because months without update is clearly LACK OF INTEREST and not LACK OF TIME! "
-----------
they do take time to make and i am in the process of redoing OLD Jovian moons like Io

before going on to Saturn and it's moons
however i will posting a Enceladus map

[MKruer]

Doesn't Io's surface change every few years do to its ongoing volcanic activity?

Ooh.

Auroral glows in Io's upper atmosphere. Different colors represent emission from different components of the atmosphere (Green comes from emitting sodium atoms, red from emitting oxygen atoms, and blue from emitting volcanic gases like Sulfur dioxide). Image taken while Io was in eclipse.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Io_(moon)

[John Van Vliet]

yes it dose see http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA10099
for a start