These 6 frames made up of raw images from Cassini’s narrow-angle camera show the shadow of a moon – Epimetheus, perhaps? – drifting across the Encke Gap, a 200-mile-wide channel in Saturn’s A ring kept clear by the shepherd moon Pan. The central median ringlet is just visible in these images. With Saturn approaching…
Tag: NASA
A Twilight Moon
In addition to its enshrouding atmosphere, Saturn’s moon Titan also has a high layer of haze that encircles it. Made up of complex hydrocarbons from the breakdown of methane and nitrogen, this haze completely covers the moon and extends over 670 miles into space. 3,200 miles across, Titan’s atmosphere is 10 times thicker and…
You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby
Opportunity’s tracks disappear into the dunes in this raw photo image taken in February, 2009. After landing on Mars in January of 2004, Opportunity and its sister rover Spirit have been exploring and transmitting data and photos like these for over 5 years now – much longer than their expected “warranty”. Although there…
Rock, Ice and Shadow
Rhea’s cratered surface appears in high relief in this photo from the Cassini orbiter, taken on February 2, 2009. (Click to view the full version.) Rhea (REE-ah) is Saturn’s second-largest moon, after Titan, but at 950 miles across compared 3,200, Rhea is dwarfed by her bigger brother. Still, Rhea has some interesting features….it is…
Ready For My Close-Up, Mister Cassini
In less than 9 hours the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft will conduct its next flyby of Saturn’s moon Titan, using its radar mapping instruments to pierce the moon’s thick atmosphere and reveal more information about surface features. In particular, tonight’s flyby will focus on a feature in Titan’s south polar region called “Ontario Lacus”. Originally mapped…
A Blooming Thaw
When the Martian ice fields warm up in the spring, geysers of gas and dust burst from the frozen surface, spraying darker material into the air. This material is carried by the wind across the ground, forming patterns that mark the direction of the wind when they erupted. Much of the ice on the…
Feature: Interview With Mars Mission Control
I recently had the chance to ask some questions to the people at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories in Pasadena, CA who are in charge of the Mars rover missions. Behind each of the photos I post here has an entire team of engineers, administrators and talented individuals without whom we would never have seen any…
News Post: Cassini Photos New Moon
Cassini scientists have identified the presence of a previously unknown moonlet within Saturn’s thin G-ring, as seen in this series of photos spanning about ten minutes of time. The moonlet, only about a third of a mile wide, is the bright streak traveling in the center of the ring. (The other streaks are overexposed stars in…
Small Steps
It’s important to remember that, even with all of the incredible images and data coming in from the robotic missions at work around our solar system every day, humans have yet to venture further than our own Moon. Which is no mean feat in itself…traveling the 240,000-mile journey there and then back is not for…
A Distant Horizon
Still one of the most compelling images taken by the Spirit exploration rover, this photo of the Sun setting behind distant mountains was taken on May 19, 2005. (In reality the “mountains” are actually the rim of a large crater.) The color here is pretty close to what a person would see were they…
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