I'm just a nerd with a Web browser and a copy of GIMP.
The data comes from here (http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/index.cfm). The Cassini team decided to follow the lead of the Mars Exploration Rovers and publicly release uncalibrated images from their VIMS camera quickly auto-converted into JPEGs. It satisfies hardcore geeks' hunger for pictures without putting too much pressure on the people who spend their time assembling the pretty pictures for general public consumption. It also means that if you know how to use an image editor, you can colorize them yourself.
The VIMS camera has a 1-megapixel square monochrome CCD that is sensitive to a decent range of infrared, visible and UV wavelengths, and a couple of filter wheels that have several kinds of filters on them that can be applied in pairs (one from each wheel. so they can do things like combining a color filter and a polarizer). The raw image archive listings say what filters were used if you know how to read them. Frequently they'll shoot red-green-blue separations so that realistic color images can be constructed from the results. In other cases they do the IR/green/UV thing to bring out subtle color variations in gray landscapes.
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Date: 2005-01-20 02:11 pm (UTC)The data comes from here (http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/index.cfm). The Cassini team decided to follow the lead of the Mars Exploration Rovers and publicly release uncalibrated images from their VIMS camera quickly auto-converted into JPEGs. It satisfies hardcore geeks' hunger for pictures without putting too much pressure on the people who spend their time assembling the pretty pictures for general public consumption. It also means that if you know how to use an image editor, you can colorize them yourself.
The VIMS camera has a 1-megapixel square monochrome CCD that is sensitive to a decent range of infrared, visible and UV wavelengths, and a couple of filter wheels that have several kinds of filters on them that can be applied in pairs (one from each wheel. so they can do things like combining a color filter and a polarizer). The raw image archive listings say what filters were used if you know how to read them. Frequently they'll shoot red-green-blue separations so that realistic color images can be constructed from the results. In other cases they do the IR/green/UV thing to bring out subtle color variations in gray landscapes.