Saturn: …and back again (WARNING: gigant-o-GIF)

Another view of Saturn’s rings, taken just a few days ago by Cassini and just transmitted back to Earth in raw form. Gigantic GIF after the jump. Focus on the center of the pictures, and then a few repetitions later on the bright outer ring in the lower right hand corner. Some really interesting stuff is going on there.

Saturn's rings

The animations both today and yesterday were created with an unusually long sequence of raw image frames sent back by Cassini and, bless their hearts, all shot with the same filter. Here’s the thing: in attempting to understand the dynamics of the rings, the imaging team is probably doing just what I’m doing here and creation animations to they can try to see and understand the behavior patterns of ther material that makes up the rings. And also doing it because it looks really cool.

Ironically, I was just turned down for a multimedia producer job at NASA. I really wasn’t keen on the idea of living just outside of Washington D.C. and away from the family, but this was one of this dream job things that you put in for because… what the hell, why not?

As usual, my lack of a degree was cited as a determining factor in their choice. I suppose, politically, it’d make NASA look bad to be promoting STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) education as heavily as it does and then hiring some un-degreed midwesterner to perform reasonably technical tasks, but on the flipside of that, I doubt whoever gets it will be as thoroughly in love with the very idea of getting up in the morning to do that job as I would’ve been. I mean, it’s not impossible that they’ll find that in a candidate… but who knows, when the cutoff forms behind whether or not you’ve plunged yourself into lifelong debt to get a piece of paper?

It’s okay, NASA. I’ll still be animating Saturn in my free time, when I get the chance. 14 days to the next Titan flyby.

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