Saturn’s moons Dione and Titan lined up with the planet’s rings, seen here nearly edge-on, from the point of view of the Cassini spacecraft’s camera on September 17, 2011. This is a composite of three raw images taken with Cassini’s red, green and blue visible-light clear filters. Dione, 700 miles wide, is dwarfed by the…
Category: Saturn
High Over Hyperion
The Cassini spacecraft passed by Saturn’s spongy-looking moon Hyperion yesterday, August 25, and returned some very dramatic images like the one seen here – fascinating! At 15,000 miles this was Cassini’s second-closest approach to Hyperion. It will pass by again on September 16 at just over twice that distance. The closest it has come to Hyperion…
Daphnis in Full Color
If you’ve been following along with Lights in the Dark since the beginning, you may know that this is one of my favorite subjects of space imagery: the shepherd moon Daphnis, traveling in its orbit around Saturn within the 26-mile-wide Keeler Gap. Recently color-calibrated by Gordan Ugarvovic, this is a true-color version of an image…
More Hope for Life on Enceladus?
Researchers on the Cassini mission team have identified large salt grains in the plumes emanating from Saturn’s icy satellite Enceladus, making an even stronger case for the existence of a salty liquid ocean beneath the moon’s frozen surface.
Moon Noir
Here’s another intriguing look at Helene, lit by sunlight from the right while some reflected light from its own highlands illuminates the interior of a valley/crater. Its dark side appears pitch black against the slightly brighter region of space behind, possibly lightened by the diffuse reflected light from ice particles in Saturn orbit. This is…
A Close Pass of Helene
On June 18, 2011, the Cassini spacecraft performed a flyby of Saturn’s moon Helene. Passing at a distance of 4,330 miles, it was its second-closest pass of the icy little moon.
Big Sisters
Here’s a color-composite image of Rhea and Titan, Saturn’s largest moons. Made from raw images acquired by the Cassini spacecraft on June 16, 2011, this really shows the vast difference in size and appearance of the two moons. Rhea, seen in the foreground, is an icy, airless and heavily-cratered world 950 miles wide. Titan, on…
Look on the Bright Side
Here’s a color-composite image of Saturn’s two-toned moon Iapetus; its Saturn-facing light side is seen here facing to the lower left. Iapetus is 1,471 km (914 miles) wide. The raw images were taken by the Cassini spacecraft on June 6, 2011 and received on Earth June 8, 2011. The camera was pointing toward Iapetus from…
A Fistful of Moons
This image from Cassini shows no less than five of Saturn’s moons in the same frame: Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across) is largest in the foreground; Dione (1,123 kilometers, or 698 miles across) can be seen just above the rings below Rhea near the center; Prometheus (86 kilometers, or 53 miles across) is just barely…
A Fan of Shadows
Cassini captured this visible-light image on October 16, 2010, showing a thick clump of icy material in Saturn’s bright F ring casting a “fan” of thin shadows. Clumps like this have been seen many times before and may be caused by the gravitational effects of passing shepherd moons like Prometheus or as-of-yet undiscovered moonlets within the ropy…
From the LITD Archives: A Primordial Moon
A beautiful Cassini color-composite by Gordan Ugarkovic, this false-color image shows the ancient and heavily-cratered surface of Saturn’s moon Phoebe. Irregularly-shaped and bout 132 miles across, Phoebe is a fifteenth the size of our own moon but is believed to be much, much older. With its retrograde (backwards) orbit, high orbital incline and extremely dark,…
Lights in the Dark 