Cassini Approaches Saturn

Here are three short films from the Cassini space mission that ended in September 2017. I believe the films are made from actual photographs. No CGI or 3 D modelling was used in the making of the films. I'm just overwhelmed by the quality of the films and of course the subject of the Cassini space mission. I'd been following the mission soon after Cassini - Huygens went into orbit around Saturn in 2004.

Here is an explanation of what can be seen on the video from the APOD website. What would it look like to approach Saturn in a spaceship? One doesn't have to just imagine -- the Cassini spacecraft did just this in 2004, recording thousands of images along the way, and hundreds of thousands more since entering orbit. Some of Cassini's early images have been digitally tweaked, cropped, and compiled into the featured inspiring video which is part of a larger developing IMAX movie project named In Saturn's Rings. In the concluding sequence, Saturn looms increasingly large on approach as cloudy Titan swoops below. With Saturn whirling around in the background, Cassini is next depicted flying over Mimas, with large Herschel Crater clearly visible. Saturn's majestic rings then take over the show as Cassini crosses Saturn's thin ring plane. Dark shadows of the ring appear on Saturn itself. Finally, the enigmatic ice-geyser moon Enceladus appears in the distance and then is approached just as the video clip ends. After more than a decade of exploration and discovery, the Cassini spacecraft ran low on fuel in 2017 was directed to enter Saturn's atmosphere, where it surely melted.

Click here for a link to the APOD website post