This image was first released five years ago today, on January 15, 2005. It shows the murky surface of Saturn’s moon Titan as seen by the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe after it made its historic descent through the moon’s thick haze and clouds and landed in a frozen plain of methane mud and icy…
Tag: moon
Cruisin’
Another look at Daphnis, this time in a beautiful color-calibrated RGB image by Gordan Ugarkovic. Click for a larger view. Image: NASA/JPL/SSI/Gordan Ugarkovic. Used with permission.
The Outside Track
This quick animation was created from 6 raw images taken by Cassini on January 7. Focusing on Saturn’s rings from above, the little shepherd moon Daphnis can be seen emerging from the planet’s cast shadow. Traveling within the Keeler gap, 5-mile-wide Daphnis pushes the ring material in front of it into scalloped waves and kicks…
Jet Setter
The icy Enceladus shows off its southern geysers, stately hovering in orbit around Saturn in this raw image from the Cassini spacecraft, taken on Christmas day. It is impressive to get such a clear view of the geysers with the low phase angle of the sunlight. Typically the geysers are only seen when the sun…
A Visit to Prometheus
This raw image, taken by the Cassini spacecraft on December 26, 2009 (on a certain space blogger’s birthday, by the way) shows an amazing view of Prometheus, one of Saturn’s many shepherd moons. This is the closest yet that Cassini has come to the 96-mile-long oblong moon. Details of its cratered surface are visible, as…
Eye on Iapetus
Saturn’s moon Iapetus shows its bright (and lumpy!) side in this image from Cassini, taken on November 29. Like many people I know, 914-mile-wide Iapetus has a dark side and a bright side, its bright surface composed of water ice and rock and its dark half a coating of material, most likely from the newly-discovered…
Mountains of the Moon
Taken by the LROC camera on board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, this image shows a detailed look at the mountains within Cabeus Crater – the region where the LCROSS’ Centaur stage rocket impacted to send up a plume of water-rich lunar soil. Many of the shadows seen here are permanent fixtures. The Moon’s orbit…
Cold and Bright
After making its flyby early Saturday morning the Cassini spacecraft captured this full-sized view of Enceladus from a distance of about 83,000 miles. (Image has been level-adjusted to bring out surface details. Original raw image can be seen here.) 318 miles across at its widest point, Enceladus’ wrinkled surface is composed of water ice that…
Enceladus and Rhea
In another stately pas de deux as seen from the point of view of the Cassini spacecraft, moons Rhea and Enceladus slip past each other in their eternal travels around Saturn. This animation is made up of 20 raw images from Cassini, taken on November 15, level-adjusted and rotated 90º clockwise. Enceladus is about to…
Water On The Moon!
The conclusive results are in….the LCROSS mission has successfully found water on the lunar surface! Although the plume from the satellite’s upper-stage rocket impact into Cabeus crater at the moon’s south pole was not immediately visible, there was still enough ejected material to be analyzed by LCROSS’ instruments. After reviewing the data over the past…
Saturn’s Darker Side
Released November 9, 2009, this image from Cassini shows the northern night side of Saturn sending a deep shadow across its rings while the 700-mile-wide Dione looks on. The shepherd moon Pandora can be seen here as well, orbiting just outside the thin F ring, at center. The Cassini spacecraft was over 800,000 miles from…
Composition in White
949-mile-wide Rhea floats in front of the rings and the brightly-lit face of Saturn in this image from Cassini, taken on November 8. The face of Saturn, overexposed here in order to see detail in the rings and Rhea, appears as bright white, making a dramatic studio backdrop. The planet’s uppermost atmospheric haze is also…
Lights in the Dark 