First Alderaan, then Prometheus?? Here we go again! Saturn’s moon Mimas looks uncannily like the Death Star, and this animation by Diamond Sky Productions makes the resemblance even more apparent. Now witness the power of this fully-armed battle station! (No shepherd moons were harmed in the making of this video.) Video © Diamond Sky Productions,…
Tag: Cassini
Floes of Frozen Methane May Be Floating on Titan’s Lakes
Although surface temperatures on Titan are cold enough that methane can exist as a liquid, filling lakes and flowing in streams, it may sometimes get so cold that even the liquid methane and ethane freezes, forming floes and icebergs of frozen hydrocarbons. This Titanic revelation was announced today during the 221st American Astronomical Society meeting…
Ghosts of Worlds Passed
Saturn’s F ring is a fascinating structure. Made of fine icy particles — most no larger than the particulates found in cigarette smoke — it orbits Saturn just outside the A ring and is easily perturbed by the gravity of nearby moons and embedded moonlets, which create streamers and clumps that rise up in fanciful…
Cassini’s Christmas Gift: a Peek at Prometheus
Captured on Christmas Day, this is a raw image from Cassini showing Saturn’s F ring buckling inwards at two places due to the gravitational tug of its inner shepherd moon, Prometheus, seen at center. As the irregularly-shaped moon approaches the ring material in its looping orbit around Saturn it draws material from the ring in…
A Colorful Christmas Moon
Merry Christmas and happy holidays everyone! Here’s your present from Lights in the Dark: a color-composite of Saturn’s moon Dione, lovingly made from raw images captured by the Cassini spacecraft on December 23. 700 miles (1120 km) wide, Dione (pronounced DEE-oh-nee) is covered pole-to-pole in craters and is crisscrossed by deep chasms and long, bright…
Saturn’s Backlit Beauty
As a sort of Christmas gift to the world, the Cassini mission team released this image today, a majestic mosaic showing the planet Saturn gleaming in backlit sunlight. “Of all the many glorious images we on Cassini have received from Saturn, none are more strikingly unusual than those we have taken from within Saturn’s shadow,”…
A River Runs Through It (and when I say “It” I mean Saturn’s moon Titan)
No, you’re not looking down at the Amazon or the Nile (although the confusion would be understandable)… this is actually a river on an entirely different world: Saturn’s moon Titan! Radar imaging by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has revealed what appears to be a long river system, complete with side-branching tributaries, meandering across the surface of…
Saturn’s Stunning, Swirling Cyclone
Oh man. It’s stuff like this that got me into space blogging in the first place. Landing here on Earth last night, this is one of several new raw images from Cassini acquired yesterday (Nov. 27) showing the enormous cyclone of clouds swirling around Saturn’s geographic north pole. The angle of sunlight highlights the multilayered…
Daphnis Is Back!
It’s been a while since I posted an image of my favorite moon of Saturn, but while looking through some recent raw images returned by the Cassini spacecraft I spotted it: Daphnis, the little sculptor shepherd moon!
Titan: Saturn’s Glow-In-The-Dark Moon
Titan just never ceases to amaze. Saturn’s largest moon, it’s wrapped in a complex, multi-layered nitrogen-and-methane atmosphere ten times thicker than Earth’s. It has seasons and weather, as evidenced by the occasional formation of large bright clouds and, more recently, an area of open-cell convection forming over its south pole. Titan even boasts the distinction…
Once you realize what this Cassini image is showing, you’ll love it.
Go ahead, take a look. Let it sink in…..waaaait for it…… there. I told you. Still wondering what it is you’re looking at? That’s ok, you’ll love it even after I tell you.
Cassini Peeks at Titan’s Southern Vortex
A color-composite image of Titan shows Saturn’s largest moon in true color, including its recently-discovered southern vortex forming above its south pole. The image was assembled from three raw images acquired on August 28 by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in red, green and blue visible light color channels. The background was extended in size to better…
Lights in the Dark 