Mimas hovers in front of Saturn’s rings in a color image composed from raw Cassini data taken on January 31, 2011. I used data taken with Cassini’s green, infrared and ultraviolet spectral filters to compose this colorized version. Known as the “Death Star” moon, 250-mile (400 km) -wide Mimas’ northern hemisphere is dominated by the 80-mile…
Tag: moon
Textured Trojan
First of all, get your mind out of the gutter. 😉 21-mile (35 km) -wide Helene is a “Trojan” moon of the much larger Dione, so called because it orbits Saturn within the path of Dione, 60º ahead of it. (Its little sister Trojan, 3-mile-wide Polydeuces, trails Dione at the rear 60º mark.) The Homeric…
Turning Fear Around
Here’s a quick animation of Mars’ moon Phobos, made from five images – released today – taken by ESA’s Mars Express during its flyby on January 9, 2011. Passing by the 14-mile-wide moon at a distance of about 62 miles (100 km), Mars Express took images in five HRSC channels…I combined those to create this….
Lunar Highlands
In another rare oblique-angle view from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter we get a look at the hilly highland terrain around a lunar crater called Vertregt J. The image above shows a shadow being cast by a cratered ridge…check out the image at right for a larger zoomable view of the region. (This area is on…
A Peak Inside
Here’s a close-up look at the central peak of our moon’s Aitken Crater, part of an image captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter on January 11, 2010. Taken at an angle, this view offers a nice sense of relief and perspective on a lunar feature not normally visible in direct-overhead shots. The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has…
A Close Pass
Here’s a close-up look at the extensively-cratered surface of Rhea, Saturn’s second-largest moon, captured by Cassini as it performed its closest flyby yet on the morning of  January 11, 2010. Passing a mere 43 miles (69 km) over the surface, Cassini got a great look at some of the deep craters that literally cover the…
A World Turned Inside Out
Take a nice long look at this beautiful image of Io, the most volcanically active world in our solar system! This was assembled by Ted Stryk from Voyager 1 images, taken as the spacecraft  passed by on March 4, 1979. At 2,263 miles (3642 km) wide Io is the third largest of Jupiter’s moons and…
Partial Eclipse Over Holland
Here’s a gorgeous photo of this morning’s partial eclipse by Arjan Almekinders from the Netherlands! The eclipse was visible to most of Europe, as well as parts of north Africa and western Asia. While the amount of light in the sky was not diminished dramatically during this eclipse according to some observers, it was noted…
Blowing off Steam
Remind me again why I love Cassini? Oh yeah, because of images like this. 🙂
Backlit Dione
Here’s a beautiful new image just in from Cassini: the silhouette of 700-mile-wide Dione seen against the sunlit limb of Saturn, its rings seen edge-on just above the moon. Some of Dione’s heavily-cratered terrain can be discerned along its southeastern edge. I particularly like the light halo effects along the edges of the moon and…
When the Moon hits your eye…
Last night’s beautiful lunar eclipse – the first one occurring on the winter solstice in 426 years! – had the Moon at one point tinted a coppery-red and floating in the night sky amongst the stars…it almost felt like you could reach up and pluck it from the sky! It was wonderfully surreal. Without a…
The Many Faces of Enceladus
A recently uploaded raw image from Cassini, this is a full-frontal view of 318-mile-wide Enceladus taken on November 30, 2010 during the spacecraft’s most recent flyby. Of particular note here is the moon’s heavily grooved and fractured surface, mostly water ice and rock, but strangely split into two sections of differing terrain – most noticeably…
Lights in the Dark 