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.
Tag: rings
Up and Over the Rings – Atlas and Pandora
Cassini’s at it again! After its last flyby of Titan the spacecraft changed course, heading up and away from Saturn’s equatorial plane at an angle that will allow it to better study the rings and the planet’s polar regions. This raw image, captured on May 23, shows Cassini’s view as it heads upwards. It shows…
If You Like Pluto, Put a Ring on It
NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft is currently speeding through the outer solar system toward its July 2015 date with Pluto, when it will take a good close look at the dwarf planet’s mysterious surface, atmosphere, moons, and… rings? Less than three-quarters the size of our moon, Pluto nevertheless has no shortage of fascinating features. It has…
Moons of Three
Saturn’s moons Dione and Titan lined up with the planet’s rings, seen here nearly edge-on, from the point of view of the Cassini spacecraft’s camera on September 17, 2011. This is a composite of three raw images taken with Cassini’s red, green and blue visible-light clear filters. Dione, 700 miles wide, is dwarfed by the…
Daphnis in Full Color
If you’ve been following along with Lights in the Dark since the beginning, you may know that this is one of my favorite subjects of space imagery: the shepherd moon Daphnis, traveling in its orbit around Saturn within the 26-mile-wide Keeler Gap. Recently color-calibrated by Gordan Ugarvovic, this is a true-color version of an image…
A Fistful of Moons
This image from Cassini shows no less than five of Saturn’s moons in the same frame: Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across) is largest in the foreground; Dione (1,123 kilometers, or 698 miles across) can be seen just above the rings below Rhea near the center; Prometheus (86 kilometers, or 53 miles across) is just barely…
Prime PDS Picks
Every six to nine months or so the Cassini Imaging Center dumps orbiter image data into NASA’s Planetary Data System, or PDS. This data is accessible to anyone with an internet connection, but it can be a little awkward to find exactly what you’re looking for (unless you’re familiar with the technical nomenclature of the…
Ring Racer (Take Two)
I came across this image today while going through the latest Cassini PDS (Planetary Data System) release, and remembered how excited I was to see it the first time when it came in last June. If you missed it, here it is again (with an image fresh off the PDS!) Man, I just LOVE this…
Northern Exposure
Cassini gets a nice look at Enceladus’ icy, cratered north pole in this image, taken on December 21, 2010. In the background we catch a glimpse of Saturn’s rings as well! Fantastic image. The Cassini spacecraft was about 20,000 miles (34000 km) from Enceladus when this was taken, using its narrow-angle camera. 318 miles across…
Dione in the Distance
Cassini looks past the southern pole of Rhea to get a view of Dione on the far side of the rings in this image, captured on January 11, 2011. Rhea, Saturn’s second-largest moon, is approximately 950 miles in diameter and is literally covered in craters. Dione, also heavily cratered, is nearly 700 miles wide. It’s…
Slicing Saturn
In this beautiful image from Cassini we see a dramatically-lit Saturn, its rings slicing across its equator as a thin bright line and casting shadows onto its atmosphere below. A great example of how Saturn’s gigantic ring system is hundreds of thousands of miles wide but only about 30 feet thick! This image was captured…
Lights in the Dark 