This animation, made from raw images received on June 22, brings us on a flight above Saturn’s B and A rings looking down over the 3,000-mile wide Cassini Division, following the elongated shadow of a moon cast upon – and through – the ring material. The different densities of the ring segments are made apparent…
Tag: Cassini
Cast Shadow
The shadow of Mimas falls across the Cassini Division in this beautiful natural color, wide-angle view from Cassini’s camera. Views like these are possible only once every 15 years, as Saturn’s spring and autumn equinoxes bring its rings and moons into horizontal alignment with the equitorial plane of the solar system and the light of…
A River Runs Through It
…or has very recently, geologically speaking. But that river would be of liquid methane, not water. And it would be hundreds of degrees below zero. And it would be on Saturn’s moon Titan. This topographic radar image, taken by Cassini during a flyby of the moon on May 21, pierced the dense clouds of Titan…
Dark Shadows
A sliver of a shadow, thousands of miles long, slices into the twilight side of Saturn’s rings and drifts off the edge of the A ring in this 8-frame animation. (Click the image to play.) As well as the motion of the moon shadow, thicker sections of the F ring can be seen moving along…
Hail, Calypso
A lesser-known moon, Calypso orbits Saturn in the same path as Tethys and another miniature moon called Telesto. Known as the “Tethys Trojans”, these two oblong-shaped moons were discovered in 1980 by Earth-based telescopes and eventually photographed by Cassini. The moniker “trojan” in astronomy is reserved for satellites that orbit a planet in the same…
Meet the Clumps
87,000 miles from the cloudtops of Saturn’s equator writhes the hazy cords of the F ring, a braided belt of icy dust that shifts and twists around and over itself. Clumps of material gather together and separate, and make the thin ring vary in thickness anywhere from under 20 miles to over 300 miles wide….
Pandorama
This animation, made up of 7 raw image frames taken by Cassini’s wide-angle camera, shows Saturn’s ring system ponderously rotating, the reflected light off the gas giant illuminating the dark material of the Cassini Division. In the lower right the moon Pandora orbits outside the twisted cords of the F ring. The planet itself is…
Streaking Past Pallene
The bright point of light in this raw image isn’t a star. It’s one of Saturn’s 61 known moons, the tiny 3-mile-wide Pallene (pronounced pal-LEE-nee). This little moon’s orbit is between those of much larger Mimas and Enceladus, around 131,000 miles out from Saturn. Only recently discovered in 2004 by the Cassini team, not much…
Little Sculptor
Another great raw image from the Cassini orbiter, showing the shepherd moon Daphnis raising high-crested waves in the edges of Saturn’s A ring bordering the Keeler Gap. Shadows cast by the low-angle sunlight show the height of these sinuous disturbances. Daphnis’ gravity affects the ring material both in front of it and behind. Discovered…
The Eye of Odysseus
This is Tethys, a 662-mile-wide moon of Saturn captured by Cassini’s cameras in this raw image from May 14. Dominating its face is the huge Odysseus Crater, its rim gleaming in the sunlight. Much of Tethys is estimated to be water ice, due to its density and high albedo (reflectivity). That Tethys was able…
Shepherds Fly
Two of Saturn’s smaller moons pass by Cassini’s wide-angle camera in this animation sequence, made from 60 raw images taken on May 26, 2009. Prometheus enters first, stage right, deforming the ringlets of the F ring with its gravity, and is followed shortly after by Atlas, taking the inside track around the edge of…
Ripples Have Ridges
Another great image showing Saturn’s moon Daphnis sending up high-walled waves in the ring material edging the Keeler Gap in which it resides. The waves cast shadows back onto the A ring, as does the moon itself. This image was taken on May 24, 2009 by the Cassini spacecraft. RAW image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Lights in the Dark 