My First Attempt at Cassini Image Processing
The Cassini-Huygens project is a space mission to Saturn launched in 1997, as a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The space probe reached Saturn in 2004, and is still operational and sending images back.
The raw images from the project have been released into the public domain, allowing anyone to process the images further. The released images are updated continuously as they are received from the probe.
So, I thought I would take a look at processing some of the images, choosing a set of images of Saturn taken on 21 Jan 2007. I created two images fro mthe raw data - one image showing a true colour image of Saturn, and another showing the same view using filters in the Methane band
The Methane image, below, is a false colour image created from two frames taken using the MT2 and MT3 filters, which are narrow band filters centered at 727 and 889 wavelenths.
For comparison, I also created a true colour image from the same perspective from three frames taken using the RED, GRN and BL1 filters, which are broadband filters allowing red, green and blue light through respectively. It is very clear that the Methane image above shows considerably more detail in Saturn’s atmosphere than the true colour image does.
I coloured and merged the raw images in Gimp, but didn’t need to do much else to get these images.