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This photograph of Saturn was taken by the Cassini spacecraft in December. The rings are completely horizontal, and appear as a razor-thin line in the middle. The shadows of those rings are evident on the planet. And that tiny little ball underneath the plane of the rings? That’s Tethys, a moon of Saturn that is over a thousand kilometers wide. Yes, Saturn is immense, but it takes good pictures. Link
This image was selected as the Astronomy Picture of the Day last weekend. It was taken by the Cassini probe in 2006 from the shadow of Saturn.
First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn, slightly scattering sunlight, in this exaggerated color image. Saturn’s rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the image. Seen in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn’s E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, at the left, just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.
You should take a look at the larger version at NASA. Link -via Laughing Squid
(Image credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA)
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5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation from stephen v2 on Vimeo.
[Vimeo Link] | Far more impressive if you embiggen (click on the rightmost icon)
We’ve all seen space travel in movies, but the real thing is far, far more beautiful and impressive. Here’s the Cassini spacecraft approaching Saturn in 2004. No CGI, no 3D models – just thousands of images the spacecraft took stitched together by Stephen van Vuuren of SV2 Studios.
Better yet, he’s turning this into an indie IMAX movie called Outside In (can’t wait to see this on the giant screen!) – via APOD
There’s a strange hexagon shape at the north pole of the planet Saturn. It was spotted 20 years ago, and Cassini confirms it’s still there. Is it some alien fortress/outpost? Or something surprisingly cooler?
Cassini looks toward Rhea’s cratered, icy landscape with the dark line of Saturn’s ringplane and the planet’s murky atmosphere as a background. Rhea is Saturn’s second-largest moon, at 1,528 km (949 mi) across. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural color view. The images were acquired on July 17, 2007 at a distance of approximately 1.2 million km (770,000 mi) from Rhea.
Link -via Metafilter
(image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI)
See also: Saturn’s Newest Moon
