I and probably many with me have already marked the dates when Cassini will encounter the larger satellites of Saturn. But I have been unable to find any official information from NASA concerning encounters with the minor moons.

Using NAIF's SPICE I've written a small program that calculates the times of the closest approach between Cassini and the minor moons of Saturn. It also calculates approximately how large the moon will look in the narrow angle camera at that time. At the moment, the program incorrectly assumes that all bodies are spherical, and it does not calculate the phase angle.

This means the numbers calculated are only approximations, and should be taken with a grain of salt. I have, however, used the program to calculate past far encounters with some of the larger moons, and the results I get seem to match images from the narrow angle camera within a few pixels.

A few examples of encounters that seem interesting to me:

The reason I'm posting here is twofold:

First, although I'm fairly sure the program works for the larger moons, I'm not exactly 100% certain it will work for future encounters with the minor moons. If it doesn't, it's a rather pointless piece of code. That is why I'd like to ask if anyone here has access to official information on one or more of these encounters, that I could use to verify that the program really does work?

Second, assuming my calculations are in fact reasonably correct, I have noticed that several of the "close" encounters with the minor moons happen very close in time to important encounters with the larger moons. This leads me to believe the Cassini team will focus on the larger moon, and taking no images of the smaller. I'd like to know if anyone here can confirm this, and if possible expand on NASA's strategy for Cassini and the minor moons?

I don't expect they will bother taking pictures of anything unless the image is large enough in pixles to resolve at least the largest possible features to a useful level of detail. They like to keep the manouvering to a minimum.

__________________
When I am done here I think I will go create something from metal.

Yeah, that's why I only included encounters that are significantly larger than what we've seen in previous images.

I also read that the imaging team temp data storage budget on the craft is pretty seriously constrained. They will be saving it for the most important shots.

It's hard to keep in mind the Cassini technology is a decade old.

__________________
When I am done here I think I will go create something from metal.

Yes, but does anyone actually know the strategy for one or more of these encounters? Does anyone know if they even exist or are simply miscalculated by me?