February 27, 2024 Dear Friends, Twenty-years ago this month, the Cassini spacecraft began its official approach to the Saturnian system. For those of us who had been assigned by NASA 14 years earlier to undertake the long voyage across the solar system to Saturn, it was a time of heightened vigilance, nervous jitters, and great exhilaration at what lay ahead.
The best space mission of all time, for now! Pluto is my second best though it is just too effing short. Cassini is still how a space mission should be, effective, comprehensive, exciting, personal, kind, etc etc. Used to visit ciclops.org just to check and recheck, I still am remembering that website after all these years!
I wrote a poem called "Roche Limit" in my book of space poems "Circle Me Son: Consider Your Smallness" which is in large part inspired by Dr. Porco's work. :)
It would be great if you could collaborate with a cinematic composer like Brian Eno, Max Richter or Bear McCreary to screen it at an appropriately awe-inspiring venue like the Lightroom in London:
Unfortunately, I don't think it's the kind of movie that most ppl would want to sit in a theater to see. You and I love it because we're science nerds but even I find it difficult because of the jarring motions.
Does your big archive movie contain all the images ... all 400K+ of them? [I think that's what there was.]
It's a slow hog, as I'm doing this as a labor of love in my rather limited spare time, but I do have a image processing chain worked out. I would eventually upload all the output movie files into the Public Domain on the Internet Archive as I sort and process each of the 116 Cassini calibrated image directories of Saturn.
I do hope to make a polished 16:9 aspect movie for showing to the general public, using smooth dynamic shots cropped, curated and edited from the ENTIRE calibrated footage I am processing.
I am using the 14 minute "8M1" music suite by Brian Eno as the target soundtrack, as I am well aware of the limitations of most people's attention spans. I would rather have them engage very deeply with the content for 15 minutes than hoist the entire unedited footage onto these poor souls...
Hope this convoluted explanation makes some sense!
Hi Howard! Thanks! It was inspiring for us, too. I don't think I ever saw that image. I'm not even sure I've seen your desk. Which school had you just finished?
Oh, I see. That would be fabulous, if you'd advertise my site there. In my book, I will be discussing Voyager first, since Cassini of course was built on the foundations that we built on Cassini. I think anyone who loved Voyager -- and that's a LOT of people -- will enjoy what I have to say.
Sounds like we all received a nice gift - a sample of the upcoming book.
Looking very good already!
The best space mission of all time, for now! Pluto is my second best though it is just too effing short. Cassini is still how a space mission should be, effective, comprehensive, exciting, personal, kind, etc etc. Used to visit ciclops.org just to check and recheck, I still am remembering that website after all these years!
I wrote a poem called "Roche Limit" in my book of space poems "Circle Me Son: Consider Your Smallness" which is in large part inspired by Dr. Porco's work. :)
Thank you!
the post was 'wildly brilliant" - a really good read. looking forward to the next..
Hey Kathy! Hello!! Nice to hear from you. And thank for the encouragement. I hope you are doing well.
Beautiful work, Carolyn. I can well imagine this is the result of major effort. What a treasure for future scholars and explorers.
Cheers,
Dear Dr. Carolyn Porco,
Thank you so much for your astounding leadership, insights and records of the Cassini mission.
I played around with the Cassini ISS raw images and roped in some music by Holst to come up with this 10 hour long video homage to Cassini:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOz-Y8ODT6w
The video bursts into color only at the very end with 3 processed Earth-Moon frames.
Some notes on my relatively simple process:
-I used the 1024x1024 sized Cassini ISS WAC and NAC raw image frames to animate the initial movies at 24 FPS.
-I applied the "Noir" filter to the footage in iMovie rotated right.
-The initial render was slowed down to 25%, enabling even fleeting moments to be observable. The MOV source file clocked in at 172GB!
-The end result with looped music by Holst was converted into a 40GB mp4 high definition video file in a square aspect and then uploaded to YouTube.
Remarkably, the looping music by Holst mostly matches the footage in a synergetic rhythm with minimal editing!
Please keep up the good work and we are all looking forward to read more of your adventures throughout the year.
Thank you, Avi! I am interested in seeing your video, the moment I get a break. I bet it's superb.
Thank you Carolyn! You might need 10 hours and a bottle of wine though:)
You can download a smaller (3.5GB!) Public Domain mp4 video file of my movie from the Internet Archive:
https://archive.org/details/CassiniSaturn
It would be great if you could collaborate with a cinematic composer like Brian Eno, Max Richter or Bear McCreary to screen it at an appropriately awe-inspiring venue like the Lightroom in London:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5r1d77moU8
Unfortunately, I don't think it's the kind of movie that most ppl would want to sit in a theater to see. You and I love it because we're science nerds but even I find it difficult because of the jarring motions.
Does your big archive movie contain all the images ... all 400K+ of them? [I think that's what there was.]
My current movie used just the 1024x1024 sized raw images for greater effect, so it is NOT the complete footage.
But yes, I am currently in the process of generating the entire footage using ALL the calibrated Cassini images of the Saturn encounter:
https://pds-rings.seti.org/viewmaster/previews/COISS_2xxx
It's a slow hog, as I'm doing this as a labor of love in my rather limited spare time, but I do have a image processing chain worked out. I would eventually upload all the output movie files into the Public Domain on the Internet Archive as I sort and process each of the 116 Cassini calibrated image directories of Saturn.
I do hope to make a polished 16:9 aspect movie for showing to the general public, using smooth dynamic shots cropped, curated and edited from the ENTIRE calibrated footage I am processing.
I am using the 14 minute "8M1" music suite by Brian Eno as the target soundtrack, as I am well aware of the limitations of most people's attention spans. I would rather have them engage very deeply with the content for 15 minutes than hoist the entire unedited footage onto these poor souls...
Hope this convoluted explanation makes some sense!
Many thanks for this insightful write up, looking forward to future e mails.
Wonderful… and wondrous! Carolyn is one of those people praised in the Spanish phrase: "Algunos nacen con estrella, y otros nacen estrellados."
Amazing! What an accomplishment for humans and Science. All this in just a bit over 100 years since 1st powered flight.
Great use of Substack! Beautifully done. Thank you.
Wonderful!!!
What a fantastic read! Thank you for all the hard work on behalf of Humanity
Awesome debut of this Substack format newsletter. All the links worked perfectly and the contents were well organized and easy to read.
Great to be able to relive those heady days when Cassini launched and the subsequent voyage to Saturn.
I'll never forget the excitement and anticipation of the burn to place Cassini into orbit around the Lord of the Rings.
It was spectacular!
Looking forward to more of this Substack content.
Well done and thank you Carolyn for the time and effort you put into this.
It's very much appreciated!
I have the Cassini Jupiter portrait right above my desk at work. A gift from a friend when I finished school. It's all so inspiring!
Hi Howard! Thanks! It was inspiring for us, too. I don't think I ever saw that image. I'm not even sure I've seen your desk. Which school had you just finished?
Beautiful read many thanks for your work and the team’s dedication over the years
Superb. Thank you
Great piece, thanks Carolyn - I put links to it on my Voyager 2 accounts. NSFV2 will tweet it at 4am UTC tomorrow.
Thank you! What is NSFV2?
Apologies: http://twitter.com/NSFVoyager2
Oh, I see. That would be fabulous, if you'd advertise my site there. In my book, I will be discussing Voyager first, since Cassini of course was built on the foundations that we built on Cassini. I think anyone who loved Voyager -- and that's a LOT of people -- will enjoy what I have to say.
Thanks again!
Yikes! I meant to say, "...since Cassini of course was built on the foundations that we laid down with Voyager".