Cassini - Images of Saturn & Its Moons

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Cassini - Images of Saturn & Its Moons

This thread deals, primarily, with Cassini's optical images. Discoveries about Saturn's moon Titan, can be found in this topic: Exploration of Titan - Saturn's Largest Moon. Discoveries about Saturn's moon Enceladus can be found here: Saturn's Moon Enceladus & Its Geysers. Infrared discoveries can be found in the Cassini - Infrared Images thread. Other major announcements and discoveries may be found in separate threads.

Update: 1^st March 2007
Thread title changed from "Cassini Image of The Day to Cassini" - "Images of Saturn & Its Moons" to better reflect the thread contents.

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Against the Current
March 27, 2006

Storm Alley's latest, greatest resident, the recent lightning-producing storm seen by the Cassini spacecraft and Earth-based observers churns away. Turbulent eddies to the west (left) of the storm indicate that it is moving eastward relative to the westward-flowing winds at this latitude on Saturn.
Scientists gave the nickname "Storm Alley" to the area around 35 degrees south latitude because of the large amount of activity seen there from the beginning of the Cassini spacecraft's approach to Saturn in early 2004. The region has spawned two large and powerful storms since the Cassini spacecraft began observations.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Feb. 16, 2006, using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 750 nanometers, and at a distance of approximately 3.2 million kilometers (2 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 19 kilometers (12 miles) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The 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://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Source: NASA/JPL - Cassini Edited May 22, 2007 by Waspie_Dwarf

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Structure in the Shadows

March 28, 2006

Shadows drape Saturn's northern hemisphere, providing a different kind of look at prominent features in the rings. From the lower left corner upward, the visible features are: the shadow of the outer B ring, followed by the wide, bright Cassini Division, then the A ring with the embedded thin, bright Encke Gap and finally the dark, narrow F ring.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Feb. 18, 2006, using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 750 nanometers, and at a distance of approximately 2.8 million kilometers (1.7 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 16 kilometers (10 miles) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The 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://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Source: NASA/JPL - Cassini

Edited March 28, 2006 by Waspie_Dwarf

[Waspie_Dwarf]

The Storm Continues

March 29, 2006

The Cassini spacecraft looks toward giant Saturn and its moon Tethys, while a large and powerful storm rages in the planet's southern hemisphere. The storm was observed by the Cassini spacecraft beginning in late Jan. 2006, and was at the time large and bright enough to be seen using modest-sized telescopes on Earth.

The fact that the storm stands out against the subtle banding of Saturn at visible wavelengths suggests that the storm's cloud tops are relatively high in the atmosphere.

Tethys is 1,071 kilometers (665 miles) across.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 18, 2006, at a distance of approximately 2.8 million kilometers (1.7 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 162 kilometers (101 miles) per pixel on Saturn.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The 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://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Source: NASA/JPL - Cassini

[Bella-Angelique]

Enjoying the pictures. Ty.

[Rykster]

I like the pics. Too bad the thread isn't "Astro Pic of the Day" though. Do any Saturnian system pics count, or do they have to be Cassini pics only?

[Waspie_Dwarf]

I like the pics. Too bad the thread isn't "Astro Pic of the Day" though. Do any Saturnian system pics count, or do they have to be Cassini pics only?

There are no rules really. I'm just carrying on something I used to do on Spaceflight News. If it looks good, is interesting or education feel free to post it, or alternatively start a new thread.

Edited March 29, 2006 by Waspie_Dwarf

[frogfish]

Nasa has a Hubble picture of the day...

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Nasa has a Hubble picture of the day...

It also has an Astronomy Picture Of The Day, which can be found here: APOD

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Small Moons on the Edge

March 30, 2006

Staring toward the outer edge of Saturn's main rings, the Cassini spacecraft spots Pandora and tiny Atlas. Several clumps are visible in the narrow F ring, as well as multiple dusty strands flanking the F ring core.

Pandora (84 kilometers, or 52 miles across) is seen here outside the F ring, while Atlas (32 kilometers, or 20 miles across) is a mere dim pixel just above the bright outer edge of the A ring.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Feb. 19, 2006, using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 862 nanometers, and at a distance of approximately 2.6 million kilometers (1.6 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 16 kilometers (10 miles) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The 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://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Source: NASA/JPL - Cassini

[Guest Lottie]

Thanks Waspie for the info . Fab pics .

[ROGER]

Just a thought . I like keeping the pictures grouped by planet and subject. With the Venus probe soon to be send I am sure some great pic's , it will help researchers and School reporting to keep them in separate threads.

Just a thought.

[truthorder]

As a sidenote, it mentions things about the storms on Saturn, and the electricity generated.

I read somewhere, and I can't remember where now offhand, where just a single lightning bolt on Jupiter or Saturn would produce enough energy to light up the entire Earth for an incredible amount of time.

I've never understood the concept of lightning on those worlds, though. Here on Earth, lightning is mostly generated (at least insofar as I've been led to believe) by balls of ice in the upper atmosphere which generate a charge.

I didn't think Jupiter and Saturn had much water in their atmospheres. I'd like to know what generates their electricity.

I'm not saying I don't believe it. I'm simply saying I'd like to know what generates it.

[frogfish]

Unless you like looking at pictures of Smog, Venus won't be that intresting...Way too thick and quiet cloud cover.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Unless you like looking at pictures of Smog, Venus won't be that intresting...Way too thick and quiet cloud cover.

That depends on how you define interesting. If by interesting you mean visually pleasing then the pictures returned by Venus Express won't be as pretty as most other planets. If however you mean scientifically interesting then there is a lot you can learn by observing cloud patterns.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Rhea Beyond the Rings

March 31, 2006

Crater-scarred Rhea floats in the distance, peeking out from behind Saturn's partly shadowed rings. This view looks upward from just beneath the ringplane. The far side of the rings is masked by Saturn's shadow. The north pole of Rhea is obscured by part of the A ring and the sharply defined F ring.

A few bright wispy markings curl around the eastern limb of Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across).

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Feb. 22, 2006, at a distance of approximately 2.2 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Rhea. The image scale is 13 kilometers (8 miles) per pixel on Rhea.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The 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://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Source: NASA/JPL - Cassini

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Edgy Atlas

April 3, 2006

The Cassini spacecraft looks up from beneath the ringplane to spy Atlas hugging the outer edge of the A ring, above center.

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Feb. 23, 2006, at a distance of approximately 1.1 million kilometers (700,000 miles) from Atlas (32 kilometers, or 20 miles across). The image scale is 7 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel on Atlas.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The 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://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Source: NASA/JPL - Cassini

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Penelope Crater

April 4, 2006

This dramatic close-up of Tethys shows the large crater Penelope lying near center, overprinted by many smaller, younger impact sites.

Three smaller impact features of roughly similar size make a line left of Penelope that runs north-south: (from bottom) Ajax, Polyphemus and Phemius.

Features on Tethys are named for characters and places from "The Iliad" and "The Odyssey." The largest impact structure on Tethys is named Odysseus. (See The Great Basin for a stunning close-up of Odysseus.)

The view is toward the Saturn-facing hemisphere on Tethys (1,071 kilometers, or 665 miles across). North is up.

The image was taken in polarized ultraviolet light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Feb. 25, 2006 at a distance of approximately 165,000 kilometers (103,000 miles) from Tethys and at a Sun-Tethys-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 23 degrees. Image scale is 984 meters (3,227 feet) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The 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://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Source: NASA/JPL - Cassini

[zandore]

From Cassini

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Enceladus Races Onward

April 5, 2006

As our robotic emissary to Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft is privileged to behold such fantastic sights as this pairing of two moons beyond the rings. The bright, narrow F ring is the outermost ring structure seen here.

In this scene, bright Enceladus (505 kilometers, or 314 miles across) begins to slip in front of more distant Dione (1,126 kilometers, or 700 miles across). Enceladus is closer to Saturn than Dione, and orbits the planet at greater velocity. Thus, the smaller moon eventually passed the larger one, as seen from the Cassini spacecraft, and continued on its way.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 3, 2006, using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of ultraviolet light centered at 338 nanometers and at a distance of approximately 2.6 million kilometers (1.6 million miles) from Enceladus and 2.7 million kilometers (1.7 million miles) from Dione. The view was taken from a phase angle (Sun-moon-spacecraft angle) of 139 degrees; about the same angle with respect to both moons. Image scale is about 16 kilometers (10 miles) per pixel on Enceladus and Dione.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The 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://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Source: NASA/JPL - Cassini

Edited April 6, 2006 by Waspie_Dwarf

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Turbulent Down South

April 6, 2006

This view of high southern latitudes on Saturn shows very linear clouds at top, usually indicative of stable prevailing winds, and two turbulent, swirling features farther south. It is possible that these features merged some time after this image was taken.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 6, 2006, using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 750 nanometers. The image was acquired at a distance of approximately 2.8 million kilometers (1.8 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 16 kilometers (10 miles) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The 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://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Source: NASA/JPL - Cassini

Edited April 7, 2006 by Waspie_Dwarf

[Glacies]

wow, thanks, the pictures are quite inspiring.

[magnetar]

Cassini spacecraft and engineers outdid themselves.

Edited April 7, 2006 by magnetar

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Star-Crossed Rings

April 6, 2006

This image is a false-color ultraviolet view of Saturn¿s B ring (center) and A ring (right), separated by a large gap known as the Cassini Division. It shows a bright horizontal streak, created by a series of time lapse images involving a star named 26 Taurus.

The image was made over a nine-hour period as the star drifted behind the rings. The opacity of the outer A ring is most pronounced on its inner edge, indicating more ring debris is present there. The Encke Gap, much smaller than the Cassini Division, is visible near the outer edge of the A ring. The B ring is significantly more opaque than the A ring, indicating a greater density of ring material when imaged from above. The sky behind the rings glows red in the ultraviolet wavelengths from the hydrogen gas that fills the solar system.

The images were processed from data taken by the ultraviolet imaging spectrograph aboard the Cassini spacecraft in May 2005.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The 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 was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The ultraviolet imaging spectrograph was built at, and the team is based at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The ultraviolet imaging spectrograph team home page is at http://lasp.colorado.edu/cassini .

Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Colorado

Source: NASA/JPL - Cassini

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Strange Shape

April 7, 2006

This atmospheric close-up shows a bright, somewhat distorted feature in Saturn's southern hemisphere. This feature might be a transient eddy which formed and then collided with an obstacle (perhaps a vortex) in the zone of wind shear between two opposing east-west flowing jets. It could also simply indicate a place where two jets are interacting.

The image was taken in polarized green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 7, 2006, at a distance of approximately 2.9 million kilometers (1.8 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 17 kilometers (10 miles) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The 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://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Source: NASA/JPL - Cassini

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Seeking the Cloud Tops

April 10, 2006

Long, thin streamers of cloud arc gracefully across this view of Saturn's southerly latitudes.

Analysis of images like this should lead scientists to a new understanding of cloud height variations on this complex gas giant world.

The image was taken in polarized green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 7, 2006, at a distance of approximately 2.9 million kilometers (1.8 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 17 kilometers (10 miles) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The 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://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Source: NASA/JPL - Cassini