NASA has their rich media library available to the public, and they made it easier than ever for the users to access and search. Sophia Nasr, an astro-particle physicist, has created a true-color image of polar vortex on Saturn’s North Pole. A young scientist used three raw images taken by Cassini and merged them in Photoshop to create an image that shows what we would see if we were orbiting Saturn in a spacecraft.
Cassini has been orbiting Saturn for over a decade now, exploring this planet and taking thousands of images. The final image Sophia Nasr created shows blue color in the center of the vortex, and it’s not fake. It comes as a result of scattering sunlight, and it’s the same phenomenon responsible for the blue sky we see on Earth. The hurricane itself spreads 1,200 miles across, which makes it around twenty times larger than an average hurricane on Earth. And the clouds are swirling around it at 300 mph. Sophia Nasr took three recent images, taken on April 26, 2017, and turned them into realistic color photos.
Each of the photos was taken through a different filter – red, green and blue – at approximately the same time. Each color emphasizes different features of the clouds and gas swirling around the eye. Sophia used Photoshop to turn them into color photo. After a bit of contrast, color and saturation tweaking, she ended up with a photo that shows what Saturn’s vortex would look like to us. And it’s fairly different from the photo of Saturn’s vortex Cassini took in 2012. Graphic designer and space enthusiast Jason Major also created a real-color image of Saturn’s vortex. He used the same principle, but different raw images:
Although black and white images of Saturn are impressive on their own, it feels even more impressive to see them in color. It feels more realistic and for me, personally, creates an even larger impact. NASA publishes raw images of Saturn on their website, and everyone can access and download them. So you can use the photos and this tutorial to create photos like this. [via Discover Magazine, image credits: NASA/JLP-Caltech/SSI/Sophia Nasr/Jason Major]
