Wednesday, January 01, 2014 7:51:21 PM
The Day the Earth Smiled
Figure 1
[click (twice) to (greatly) enlarge]
Figure 2
[click (twice) to (greatly) enlarge]
Figure 3
[click (twice) to (greatly) enlarge]
2013-11-12
On July 19, 2013, in an event celebrated the world over, NASA's Cassini spacecraft slipped into Saturn's shadow and turned to image the planet, seven of its moons, its inner rings -- and, in the background, our home planet, Earth.
With the sun's powerful and potentially damaging rays eclipsed by Saturn itself, Cassini's onboard cameras were able to take advantage of this unique viewing geometry. They acquired a panoramic mosaic of the Saturn system that allows scientists to see details in the rings and throughout the system as they are backlit by the sun. This mosaic is special as it marks the third time our home planet was imaged from the outer solar system; the second time it was imaged by Cassini from Saturn's orbit; and the first time ever that inhabitants of Earth were made aware in advance that their photo would be taken from such a great distance.
With both Cassini's wide-angle and narrow-angle cameras aimed at Saturn, Cassini was able to capture 323 images in just over four hours. This final mosaic uses 141 of those wide-angle images. Images taken using the red, green and blue spectral filters of the wide-angle camera were combined and mosaicked together to create this natural-color view. A brightened version with contrast and color enhanced (Figure 1), a version with just the planets annotated (Figure 2), and an annotated version (Figure 3) are shown above.
This image spans about 404,880 miles (651,591 kilometers) across.
The outermost ring shown here is Saturn's E ring, the core of which is situated about 149,000 miles (240,000 kilometers) from Saturn. The geysers erupting from the south polar terrain of the moon Enceladus supply the fine icy particles that comprise the E ring; diffraction by sunlight gives the ring its blue color. Enceladus (313 miles, or 504 kilometers, across) and the extended plume formed by its jets are visible, embedded in the E ring on the left side of the mosaic.
At the 12 o'clock position and a bit inward from the E ring lies the barely discernible ring created by the tiny, Cassini-discovered moon, Pallene (3 miles, or 4 kilometers, across). (For more on structures like Pallene's ring, see PIA08328 [ http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08328 ]). The next narrow and easily seen ring inward is the G ring. Interior to the G ring, near the 11 o'clock position, one can barely see the more diffuse ring created by the co-orbital moons, Janus (111 miles, or 179 kilometers, across) and Epimetheus (70 miles, or 113 kilometers, across). Farther inward, we see the very bright F ring closely encircling the main rings of Saturn.
Following the outermost E ring counter-clockwise from Enceladus, the moon Tethys (662 miles, or 1,066 kilometers, across) appears as a large yellow orb just outside of the E ring. Tethys is positioned on the illuminated side of Saturn; its icy surface is shining brightly from yellow sunlight reflected by Saturn. Continuing to about the 2 o'clock position is a dark pixel just outside of the G ring; this dark pixel is Saturn's Death Star moon, Mimas (246 miles, or 396 kilometers, across). Mimas appears, upon close inspection, as a very thin crescent because Cassini is looking mostly at its non-illuminated face.
The moons Prometheus, Pandora, Janus and Epimetheus are also visible in the mosaic near Saturn's bright narrow F ring. Prometheus (53 miles, or 86 kilometers, across) is visible as a faint black dot just inside the F ring and at the 9 o'clock position. On the opposite side of the rings, just outside the F ring, Pandora (50 miles, or 81 kilometers, across) can be seen as a bright white dot. Pandora and Prometheus are shepherd moons and gravitational interactions between the ring and the moons keep the F ring narrowly confined. At the 11 o'clock position in between the F ring and the G ring, Janus (111 miles, or 179 kilometers, across) appears as a faint black dot. Janus and Prometheus are dark for the same reason Mimas is mostly dark: we are looking at their non-illuminated sides in this mosaic. Midway between the F ring and the G ring, at about the 8 o'clock position, is a single bright pixel, Epimetheus. Looking more closely at Enceladus, Mimas and Tethys, especially in the brightened version of the mosaic, one can see these moons casting shadows through the E ring like a telephone pole might cast a shadow through a fog.
In the non-brightened version of the mosaic, one can see bright clumps of ring material orbiting within the Encke gap near the outer edge of the main rings and immediately to the lower left of the globe of Saturn. Also, in the dark B ring within the main rings, at the 9 o'clock position, one can see the faint outlines of two spoke features, first sighted by NASA's Voyager spacecraft in the early 1980s and extensively studied by Cassini.
Finally, in the lower right of the mosaic, in between the bright blue E ring and the faint but defined G ring, is the pale blue dot of our planet, Earth. Look closely and you can see the moon protruding from the Earth's lower right. (For a higher resolution view of the Earth and moon taken during this campaign, see PIA14949 [ http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA14949 ].) Earth's twin, Venus, appears as a bright white dot in the upper left quadrant of the mosaic, also between the G and E rings. Mars also appears as a faint red dot embedded in the outer edge of the E ring, above and to the left of Venus.
For ease of visibility, Earth, Venus, Mars, Enceladus, Epimetheus and Pandora were all brightened by a factor of eight and a half relative to Saturn. Tethys was brightened by a factor of four. In total, 809 background stars are visible and were brightened by a factor ranging from six, for the brightest stars, to 16, for the faintest. The faint outer rings (from the G ring to the E ring) were also brightened relative to the already bright main rings by factors ranging from two to eight, with the lower-phase-angle (and therefore fainter) regions of these rings brightened the most. The brightened version of the mosaic was further brightened and contrast-enhanced all over to accommodate print applications and a wide range of computer-screen viewing conditions.
Some ring features -- such as full rings traced out by tiny moons -- do not appear in this version of the mosaic because they require extreme computer enhancement, which would adversely affect the rest of the mosaic. This version was processed for balance and beauty.
This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 17 degrees below the ring plane. Cassini was approximately 746,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Saturn when the images in this mosaic were taken. Image scale on Saturn is about 45 miles (72 kilometers) per pixel.
This mosaic was made from pictures taken over a span of more than four hours while the planets, moons and stars were all moving relative to Cassini. Thus, due to spacecraft motion, these objects in the locations shown here were not in these specific places over the entire duration of the imaging campaign. Note also that Venus appears far from Earth, as does Mars, because they were on the opposite side of the sun from Earth.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA17172 ; http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-329 ; http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-256
*
Glorious Saturn. And You, Too.
Nov. 12 2013
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/11/12/saturn_incredible_mosaic_of_the_ringed_wonder.html [with comments]
*
Viewpoint: Saturn snapped as Earth smiled
12 November 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24913141
*
Astronomy Picture of the Day
In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours in 2006 and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. ... Far in the distance [ http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap060927.html ], at the left, just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot ] of Earth.
[click (twice) to (greatly) enlarge]
2011 September 4
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110904.html
*
Voyager: Taking a picture of home
The pale blue dot caught in a thin strip of light in the image is Earth.
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot ]
Voyager 1 captured the image from a distance of six billion kilometres (four billion miles). In it Earth is less than a pixel in size.
The image, taken in 1990, prompted astronomer Carl Sagan to say simply: "That's here. That's home. That's us."
In this clip from the BBC Four documentary, Voyager: to the final frontier, Dallas Campbell describes how the picture came about.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21452513 [the above YouTube of the embedded video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_GxpUn0XqQ (no comments yet)]
--
Images of Saturn From the Cassini Mission
Dec 31, 2013
[36 photos]
The spinning vortex of Saturn's north polar storm resembles a deep red rose of giant proportions surrounded by green foliage in this false-color image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Measurements have sized the eye at a staggering 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) across with cloud speeds as fast as 330 miles per hour (150 meters per second). The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 261,000 miles (419,000 kilometers) from Saturn.
(NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)
The vortex at Saturn's north pole, seen here in the infrared. The eye of the immense cyclone is about 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) wide.
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
Saturn's mysterious north polar hexagon, a massive persistent cloud structure atop the north pole.
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
Vertical structures, among the tallest seen in Saturn's main rings, rise abruptly from the edge of Saturn's B ring to cast long shadows on the ring in this image taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft two weeks before the planet's August 2009 equinox. In this image, Cassini's narrow angle camera captured a 1,200-kilometer-long (750-mile-long) section arcing along the outer edge of the B ring. Here, vertical structures tower as high as 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) above the plane of the rings -- a significant deviation from the vertical thickness of the main A, B and C rings, which is generally only about 10 meters (about 30 feet). Cassini scientists believe that this is one prominent region at the outer edge of the B ring where large bodies, or moonlets, up to a kilometer or more in size, are found. It is possible that these bodies significantly affect the ring material streaming past them and force the particles upward, in a "splashing" manner.
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
Detail of a disturbance in Saturn's F ring, including evidence for the perturbing effect of small moonlets orbiting in or close to the ring's bright core. For some time, scientists have suspected the presence of tiny moonlets that orbit Saturn in association with the clumpy ring. As the small satellites move close to the F ring core they leave a gravitational signature. In some cases they can draw out material in the form of a "streamer".
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
The gravity of potato-shaped Prometheus (86 kilometers, or 53 miles across) periodically creates streamer-channels in the F ring, and the moon's handiwork can be seen in the dark channels here.
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
The moon Prometheus creates an intricate pattern of perturbation in Saturn's F ring while the moon Daphnis disturbs the A ring in this image taken after the planet's August 2009 equinox.
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
This image shows the first flash of sunlight reflected off a lake on Saturn's moon Titan. The glint off a mirror-like surface is known as a specular reflection. This kind of glint was detected by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) on NASA's Cassini spacecraft on July 8, 2009. It confirmed the presence of liquid in the moon's northern hemisphere, where lakes are more numerous and larger than those in the southern hemisphere. The lakes are believed to be filled with liquid ethane and methane.
(NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/DLR)
Dazzling Titan glows with a 360-degree sunset as light scatters through its very extended atmosphere.
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
Less than 20 minutes after Cassini's close approach to Titan on March 31, 2005, its cameras captured this view of Saturn through Titan's upper atmosphere. The northern part of Saturn's disk can be seen at the upper left; dark horizontal lines are shadows cast upon Saturn by its rings. Below this level, Titan's atmosphere is thick enough to obscure Saturn. The image was captured at a distance of 7,980 kilometers (4,960 miles) from Titan, when Saturn was about 1.3 million kilometers (808,000 miles) away.
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
NASA's Cassini spacecraft successfully completed its October 1, 2011 flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus and its jets of water vapor and ice. At its closest approach, the spacecraft flew approximately 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the moon's surface. The close approach was designed to give some of Cassini's instruments, including the ion and neutral mass spectrometer, the chance to "taste" the jets themselves.
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
The opposition effect, a brightness surge that is visible on Saturn's rings when the sun is directly behind the spacecraft, is captured here as a colorful halo of light moving across Saturn's sunlit rings.
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/12/images-of-saturn-from-the-cassini-mission/100653/ [with comments]
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Figure 1
[click (twice) to (greatly) enlarge]
Figure 2
[click (twice) to (greatly) enlarge]
Figure 3
[click (twice) to (greatly) enlarge]
2013-11-12
On July 19, 2013, in an event celebrated the world over, NASA's Cassini spacecraft slipped into Saturn's shadow and turned to image the planet, seven of its moons, its inner rings -- and, in the background, our home planet, Earth.
With the sun's powerful and potentially damaging rays eclipsed by Saturn itself, Cassini's onboard cameras were able to take advantage of this unique viewing geometry. They acquired a panoramic mosaic of the Saturn system that allows scientists to see details in the rings and throughout the system as they are backlit by the sun. This mosaic is special as it marks the third time our home planet was imaged from the outer solar system; the second time it was imaged by Cassini from Saturn's orbit; and the first time ever that inhabitants of Earth were made aware in advance that their photo would be taken from such a great distance.
With both Cassini's wide-angle and narrow-angle cameras aimed at Saturn, Cassini was able to capture 323 images in just over four hours. This final mosaic uses 141 of those wide-angle images. Images taken using the red, green and blue spectral filters of the wide-angle camera were combined and mosaicked together to create this natural-color view. A brightened version with contrast and color enhanced (Figure 1), a version with just the planets annotated (Figure 2), and an annotated version (Figure 3) are shown above.
This image spans about 404,880 miles (651,591 kilometers) across.
The outermost ring shown here is Saturn's E ring, the core of which is situated about 149,000 miles (240,000 kilometers) from Saturn. The geysers erupting from the south polar terrain of the moon Enceladus supply the fine icy particles that comprise the E ring; diffraction by sunlight gives the ring its blue color. Enceladus (313 miles, or 504 kilometers, across) and the extended plume formed by its jets are visible, embedded in the E ring on the left side of the mosaic.
At the 12 o'clock position and a bit inward from the E ring lies the barely discernible ring created by the tiny, Cassini-discovered moon, Pallene (3 miles, or 4 kilometers, across). (For more on structures like Pallene's ring, see PIA08328 [ http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08328 ]). The next narrow and easily seen ring inward is the G ring. Interior to the G ring, near the 11 o'clock position, one can barely see the more diffuse ring created by the co-orbital moons, Janus (111 miles, or 179 kilometers, across) and Epimetheus (70 miles, or 113 kilometers, across). Farther inward, we see the very bright F ring closely encircling the main rings of Saturn.
Following the outermost E ring counter-clockwise from Enceladus, the moon Tethys (662 miles, or 1,066 kilometers, across) appears as a large yellow orb just outside of the E ring. Tethys is positioned on the illuminated side of Saturn; its icy surface is shining brightly from yellow sunlight reflected by Saturn. Continuing to about the 2 o'clock position is a dark pixel just outside of the G ring; this dark pixel is Saturn's Death Star moon, Mimas (246 miles, or 396 kilometers, across). Mimas appears, upon close inspection, as a very thin crescent because Cassini is looking mostly at its non-illuminated face.
The moons Prometheus, Pandora, Janus and Epimetheus are also visible in the mosaic near Saturn's bright narrow F ring. Prometheus (53 miles, or 86 kilometers, across) is visible as a faint black dot just inside the F ring and at the 9 o'clock position. On the opposite side of the rings, just outside the F ring, Pandora (50 miles, or 81 kilometers, across) can be seen as a bright white dot. Pandora and Prometheus are shepherd moons and gravitational interactions between the ring and the moons keep the F ring narrowly confined. At the 11 o'clock position in between the F ring and the G ring, Janus (111 miles, or 179 kilometers, across) appears as a faint black dot. Janus and Prometheus are dark for the same reason Mimas is mostly dark: we are looking at their non-illuminated sides in this mosaic. Midway between the F ring and the G ring, at about the 8 o'clock position, is a single bright pixel, Epimetheus. Looking more closely at Enceladus, Mimas and Tethys, especially in the brightened version of the mosaic, one can see these moons casting shadows through the E ring like a telephone pole might cast a shadow through a fog.
In the non-brightened version of the mosaic, one can see bright clumps of ring material orbiting within the Encke gap near the outer edge of the main rings and immediately to the lower left of the globe of Saturn. Also, in the dark B ring within the main rings, at the 9 o'clock position, one can see the faint outlines of two spoke features, first sighted by NASA's Voyager spacecraft in the early 1980s and extensively studied by Cassini.
Finally, in the lower right of the mosaic, in between the bright blue E ring and the faint but defined G ring, is the pale blue dot of our planet, Earth. Look closely and you can see the moon protruding from the Earth's lower right. (For a higher resolution view of the Earth and moon taken during this campaign, see PIA14949 [ http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA14949 ].) Earth's twin, Venus, appears as a bright white dot in the upper left quadrant of the mosaic, also between the G and E rings. Mars also appears as a faint red dot embedded in the outer edge of the E ring, above and to the left of Venus.
For ease of visibility, Earth, Venus, Mars, Enceladus, Epimetheus and Pandora were all brightened by a factor of eight and a half relative to Saturn. Tethys was brightened by a factor of four. In total, 809 background stars are visible and were brightened by a factor ranging from six, for the brightest stars, to 16, for the faintest. The faint outer rings (from the G ring to the E ring) were also brightened relative to the already bright main rings by factors ranging from two to eight, with the lower-phase-angle (and therefore fainter) regions of these rings brightened the most. The brightened version of the mosaic was further brightened and contrast-enhanced all over to accommodate print applications and a wide range of computer-screen viewing conditions.
Some ring features -- such as full rings traced out by tiny moons -- do not appear in this version of the mosaic because they require extreme computer enhancement, which would adversely affect the rest of the mosaic. This version was processed for balance and beauty.
This view looks toward the unlit side of the rings from about 17 degrees below the ring plane. Cassini was approximately 746,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Saturn when the images in this mosaic were taken. Image scale on Saturn is about 45 miles (72 kilometers) per pixel.
This mosaic was made from pictures taken over a span of more than four hours while the planets, moons and stars were all moving relative to Cassini. Thus, due to spacecraft motion, these objects in the locations shown here were not in these specific places over the entire duration of the imaging campaign. Note also that Venus appears far from Earth, as does Mars, because they were on the opposite side of the sun from Earth.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA17172 ; http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-329 ; http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2013-256
*
Glorious Saturn. And You, Too.
Nov. 12 2013
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/11/12/saturn_incredible_mosaic_of_the_ringed_wonder.html [with comments]
*
Viewpoint: Saturn snapped as Earth smiled
12 November 2013
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24913141
*
Astronomy Picture of the Day
In the shadow of Saturn, unexpected wonders appear. The robotic Cassini spacecraft now orbiting Saturn drifted in giant planet's shadow for about 12 hours in 2006 and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. ... Far in the distance [ http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap060927.html ], at the left, just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot ] of Earth.
[click (twice) to (greatly) enlarge]
2011 September 4
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap110904.html
*
Voyager: Taking a picture of home
26 February 2013
The pale blue dot caught in a thin strip of light in the image is Earth.
[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale_Blue_Dot ]
Voyager 1 captured the image from a distance of six billion kilometres (four billion miles). In it Earth is less than a pixel in size.
The image, taken in 1990, prompted astronomer Carl Sagan to say simply: "That's here. That's home. That's us."
In this clip from the BBC Four documentary, Voyager: to the final frontier, Dallas Campbell describes how the picture came about.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21452513 [the above YouTube of the embedded video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_GxpUn0XqQ (no comments yet)]
--
Images of Saturn From the Cassini Mission
Dec 31, 2013
[36 photos]
The spinning vortex of Saturn's north polar storm resembles a deep red rose of giant proportions surrounded by green foliage in this false-color image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Measurements have sized the eye at a staggering 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) across with cloud speeds as fast as 330 miles per hour (150 meters per second). The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 261,000 miles (419,000 kilometers) from Saturn.
(NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI)
The vortex at Saturn's north pole, seen here in the infrared. The eye of the immense cyclone is about 2,000 kilometers (1,250 miles) wide.
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
Saturn's mysterious north polar hexagon, a massive persistent cloud structure atop the north pole.
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
Vertical structures, among the tallest seen in Saturn's main rings, rise abruptly from the edge of Saturn's B ring to cast long shadows on the ring in this image taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft two weeks before the planet's August 2009 equinox. In this image, Cassini's narrow angle camera captured a 1,200-kilometer-long (750-mile-long) section arcing along the outer edge of the B ring. Here, vertical structures tower as high as 2.5 kilometers (1.6 miles) above the plane of the rings -- a significant deviation from the vertical thickness of the main A, B and C rings, which is generally only about 10 meters (about 30 feet). Cassini scientists believe that this is one prominent region at the outer edge of the B ring where large bodies, or moonlets, up to a kilometer or more in size, are found. It is possible that these bodies significantly affect the ring material streaming past them and force the particles upward, in a "splashing" manner.
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
Detail of a disturbance in Saturn's F ring, including evidence for the perturbing effect of small moonlets orbiting in or close to the ring's bright core. For some time, scientists have suspected the presence of tiny moonlets that orbit Saturn in association with the clumpy ring. As the small satellites move close to the F ring core they leave a gravitational signature. In some cases they can draw out material in the form of a "streamer".
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
The gravity of potato-shaped Prometheus (86 kilometers, or 53 miles across) periodically creates streamer-channels in the F ring, and the moon's handiwork can be seen in the dark channels here.
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
The moon Prometheus creates an intricate pattern of perturbation in Saturn's F ring while the moon Daphnis disturbs the A ring in this image taken after the planet's August 2009 equinox.
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
This image shows the first flash of sunlight reflected off a lake on Saturn's moon Titan. The glint off a mirror-like surface is known as a specular reflection. This kind of glint was detected by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) on NASA's Cassini spacecraft on July 8, 2009. It confirmed the presence of liquid in the moon's northern hemisphere, where lakes are more numerous and larger than those in the southern hemisphere. The lakes are believed to be filled with liquid ethane and methane.
(NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/DLR)
Dazzling Titan glows with a 360-degree sunset as light scatters through its very extended atmosphere.
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
Less than 20 minutes after Cassini's close approach to Titan on March 31, 2005, its cameras captured this view of Saturn through Titan's upper atmosphere. The northern part of Saturn's disk can be seen at the upper left; dark horizontal lines are shadows cast upon Saturn by its rings. Below this level, Titan's atmosphere is thick enough to obscure Saturn. The image was captured at a distance of 7,980 kilometers (4,960 miles) from Titan, when Saturn was about 1.3 million kilometers (808,000 miles) away.
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
NASA's Cassini spacecraft successfully completed its October 1, 2011 flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus and its jets of water vapor and ice. At its closest approach, the spacecraft flew approximately 62 miles (100 kilometers) above the moon's surface. The close approach was designed to give some of Cassini's instruments, including the ion and neutral mass spectrometer, the chance to "taste" the jets themselves.
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
The opposition effect, a brightness surge that is visible on Saturn's rings when the sun is directly behind the spacecraft, is captured here as a colorful halo of light moving across Saturn's sunlit rings.
(NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2013/12/images-of-saturn-from-the-cassini-mission/100653/ [with comments]
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Greensburg, KS - 5/4/07
"Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty."
from John Philpot Curran, Speech
upon the Right of Election, 1790
F6
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