Old Pictures from Celestia (locked)

[PlutonianEmpire]

I messed around with the atmosphere values for Titan's Mie atmosphere. The deep blue seemed ridiculous.

The deep blue haze extending above the orange smog is of course not ridiculous.

Which is why I used the word "seemed".

I had several instructive mail exchanges about its existence and its visual appearance with the Cassini lead scientist before implementing it into Celestia.

Here is a (true/natural) color photo by NASA
http://www.space.com/14053-titans-orang ... close.html
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

and this is the comparison with Celestia.1.6.x

++++++++++++++++++
Note: Removing the orange smog by hitting the 'I' key shortcut makes little sense without also switching off Titan's atmosphere (via CTRL+A) at the same time. Without removing the latter, you indeed perceive an unnatural display of the remaining deep blue haze around Titan that is too intensive visually! Such (partial) displays have no relation to reality anyway. Their only purpose is to enable a glimpse on Titan's surface morphology without actually using 'infrared filters' to penetrate the orange smog.
++++++++++++++++++

But nevertheless, look at this close-up (UV enhanced) photo of the layers of Titan's atmosphere by the Cassini spacecraft
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Titan ... Layers.jpg

Imagine to remove just the orange smog in the lower part of this close-up and you will retain an image not too dissimilar to what Celestia gives after just removing the orange cloud layer (i.e. by hitting the 'I' key)

I think you also worsened the backscattering appearance of Titan in comparison with
what I implemented into Celestia. Its close resemblance with real Cassini photos
has been amply discussed in previous shatters.net threads:

Fridger

I think I faintly recall from past discussions that Celestia is intended to give the user a "naked eye" experience, meaning space is shown as it would appear to the naked eye. I also faintly recall a statement saying the blue haze in Titan's upper atmosphere is probably not visible to the naked eye. I took both these into account when modifying Titan's atmosphere.

I could be wrong though.

[t00fri]

...
I think I faintly recall from past discussions that Celestia is intended to give the user a "naked eye" experience, meaning space is shown as it would appear to the naked eye. I also faintly recall a statement saying the blue haze in Titan's upper atmosphere is probably not visible to the naked eye. I took both these into account when modifying Titan's atmosphere.

I could be wrong though.

To clear these matters up in an "authoritative" manner, I had contacted the leading scientist of the Cassini mission (as I wrote above). While you may do whatever you like with your Titan images, in Celestia Development we try to stick to facts rather than to unreferenced "faint remembrances". I would not have implemented a weak trace of the deep blue haze beyond the orange smog boundary ( see above) without a direct confirmation by Cassini mission scientists of its faint naked eye visibility. I suggest you consult this official page about the Blue Haze and its appearance in Natural Colors <=> naked eye visibility:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/image ... ageId=4445
The annotations comply with the informations I received directly by Cassini scientists.

Of course, the actual visibility of the Blue Haze is weaker than displayed on some NASA images, like e.g. here on the introductory page of the Cassini Solstice Mission site:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/science/inde ... ePageID=73



Finally, as concerns your desire

...to give the user a "naked eye" experience,

this image you displayed in your post above then is a manifest contradiction thereof

You sure know that it is impossible to see details of Titan's surface with the naked eye!

And besides, in Celestia we had to break this qualitative rule of "naked eye visibility" in many places in favor of an astrophysically more complete and thus more sensible visualization. It is a fact that these days only a small fraction of astronomical imaging takes place in the tiny wavelength window of strict "naked eye visibility".

Fridger

[Reiko]

Dry dock with spotlights is getting a little better. Still have a lot to do.

[Goofy]

Dry dock with spotlights is getting a little better. Still have a lot to do.

Gasp!
Well done, Reiko, it looks like a real thing.
Cannot wait to test it.
Bye

Goofy

[Cham]

Really beautiful, Reiko ! It doesn't look like in Celestia, it's looking like real !

[J.T.K.]

]

Dry dock with spotlights is getting a little better. Still have a lot to do.

Cool !
You can work for ILM or Pixar.

Can you tell us the weight of your files ?
Drydock=
Enterprise=

[PlutonianEmpire]

...
I think I faintly recall from past discussions that Celestia is intended to give the user a "naked eye" experience, meaning space is shown as it would appear to the naked eye. I also faintly recall a statement saying the blue haze in Titan's upper atmosphere is probably not visible to the naked eye. I took both these into account when modifying Titan's atmosphere.

I could be wrong though.

To clear these matters up in an "authoritative" manner, I had contacted the leading scientist of the Cassini mission (as I wrote above). While you may do whatever you like with your Titan images, in Celestia Development we try to stick to facts rather than to unreferenced "faint remembrances". I would not have implemented a weak trace of the deep blue haze beyond the orange smog boundary ( see above) without a direct confirmation by Cassini mission scientists of its faint naked eye visibility. I suggest you consult this official page about the Blue Haze and its appearance in Natural Colors <=> naked eye visibility:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/image ... ageId=4445
The annotations comply with the informations I received directly by Cassini scientists.

Of course, the actual visibility of the Blue Haze is weaker than displayed on some NASA images, like e.g. here on the introductory page of the Cassini Solstice Mission site:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/science/inde ... ePageID=73



Finally, as concerns your desire

...to give the user a "naked eye" experience,

this image you displayed in your post above then is a manifest contradiction thereof

titan4.jpg

You sure know that it is impossible to see details of Titan's surface with the naked eye!

And besides, in Celestia we had to break this qualitative rule of "naked eye visibility" in many places in favor of an astrophysically more complete and thus more sensible visualization. It is a fact that these days only a small fraction of astronomical imaging takes place in the tiny wavelength window of strict "naked eye visibility".

Fridger

Ah. In any case, I do apologize.

[Reiko]

Dry dock with spotlights is getting a little better. Still have a lot to do.

Gasp!
Well done, Reiko, it looks like a real thing.
Cannot wait to test it.
Bye

Goofy

Really beautiful, Reiko ! It doesn't look like in Celestia, it's looking like real !

Cool !
You can work for ILM or Pixar.

Can you tell us the weight of your files ?
Drydock=
Enterprise=

Thank you guys. The lighting was accomplished using the texture baking features of 3ds Max 2012. The big drawback to that is working on how to get rid of the texture seams that result from the unwrapping process. You can't see them when viewing the ship up close but when you pull back they are very obvious.

Can you tell us the weight of your files ?
Drydock=
Enterprise=

So far the whole thing is around 27MB but most of that is a result of the textures. Once I optimize them that number should come way down. The models themselves come out to 6.7MB all together.
All I did was take an Enterprise and dock model from Bridge Commander then unwrap and re-render the textures with the lighting effects baked in.

[PlutonianEmpire]

I took over an existing star, manipulated it to fit my needs, and egomaniacally named the system after myself.

The original star is still itself; I simply bumped it up to trinary status. The star on the left is itself a fictional close binary, with the original star on the right. It is the same system in which both the Nueve Pluton moon and lavender gas giant I introduced on page 59 are located. The fictional binary was added later.

[J.T.K.]

Hi,

I think that the system is not stable .
More the orbit of the farest planet is disrupted by second star,
but we didn't see the charateristics of the stc file...

[PlutonianEmpire]

Hi,

I think that the system is not stable .
More the orbit of the farest planet is disrupted by second star,
but we didn't see the charateristics of the stc file...

Ah, I see.

here's a zip containing the system (SSC and STC only, no textures), so you can see for yourself.

system.zip

(16.51 KiB) Downloaded 34 times

Anyways, I got tired of Earth orbiting Saturn, so I put Saturn back in its rightful orbit, and came up with a completely fictional gas giant in Earth's original orbit.

Introducing, Earth and Gaea.

[J.T.K.]

Hi,

I think that the system is not stable .
More the orbit of the farest planet is disrupted by second star,
but we didn't see the charateristics of the stc file...

Ah, I see.

here's a zip containing the system (SSC and STC only, no textures), so you can see for yourself.

Fine, I took the file and here are the result :
1° After downloading, the simulation up to 240 000 years after J.C. and the stars are always each side of barycenter.
2° The inclination of the farest planet is good and considers the presence of the first star.
There is no physically problem for this stars system.

But...
You take an 'A star', I think that it is too big, too bright, to hot, too short life...life (which we know it) doesn't support this star type, why not a F, G or K ?
For the another binary (G7 and G9) no problem.

Go on !

[john Van Vliet]

some fun with cassini rev 161
https://picasaweb.google.com/1026959012 ... siniRev161
example

Titan & Enceladus mutual event

[PlutonianEmpire]

Hi,

I think that the system is not stable .
More the orbit of the farest planet is disrupted by second star,
but we didn't see the charateristics of the stc file...

Ah, I see.

here's a zip containing the system (SSC and STC only, no textures), so you can see for yourself.

Fine, I took the file and here are the result :
1° After downloading, the simulation up to 240 000 years after J.C. and the stars are always each side of barycenter.
2° The inclination of the farest planet is good and considers the presence of the first star.
There is no physically problem for this stars system.

But...
You take an 'A star', I think that it is too big, too bright, to hot, too short life...life (which we know it) doesn't support this star type, why not a F, G or K ?
For the another binary (G7 and G9) no problem.

Go on !

I think it's safe to say the habitable worlds in this system are terraformed.

[Reiko]

Added space suited people standing on the hull.