The shadow of Saturn’s rings is reduced to a thin sliver running across the face of the planet in the upper part of this image taken on August 12, one day after its spring equinox. The rings appear dark in this image, since the sunlight is striking them edge-on and Cassini’s cameras are set so…
Tag: Saturn
The Ghost and the Darkness
A spectral figure casts a long shadow as it travels along the path of Saturn’s F ring on August 7, 2009 in this image from the Cassini orbiter. Not a ghost per se but rather a clump of ring material, pulled upwards from the rest of the ring plane by what is perhaps a small…
Thin Grey Line
Saturn’s expansive rings cast but a thin line of a shadow across its equator in this beautiful high-angle view taken by Cassini on July 18, 2009. The rings, normally overexposed in images to make them more visible, are instead underexposed here so some of the details of Saturn’s atmosphere can be seen. Intricate banding of…
Three Little Moons
A little family portrait from the house of Saturn. Enceladus, Tethys and Dione. Okay, they weren’t really all lined up like that….I combined three raw shots from Cassini, taken over the weekend, and lined them up nicely. Approximate sizes in relation to each other. Just for fun. Great images though! Tethys’ huge 250-mile-wide Odysseus crater…
Sunday Best
Another fantastic image of one of my favorite subjects from the Cassini mission: the little shepherd moon Daphnis and its icy wake within the Keeler gap. This is an adjusted version of a raw image taken Saturday, July 11, and received at the imaging center in Boulder, CO later the same day. See the original…
Subtle Shades
The intricate structure of Saturn’s rings is seen here in this raw image from Cassini, taken yesterday. This (I believe) shows the dark material of the Cassini Division (bottom) below the brighter bands of the A ring (middle to top). I could be mistaken though, and this is instead the inner section of the B…
Rhea View
A fascinating bit of work by Gordan Ugarkovic, this is a brief false-color animation of 950-mile-wide Rhea, second-largest moon of Saturn. Rhea is very reflective, indicating that it is made up of a lot of water ice, and is also heavily cratered (clearly evident here.) Water ice behaves like rock at the low temperatures that…
Shepherds Passing
 Without as much as a wave shepherd moons Prometheus and Atlas pass by each other, each on their own paths around the rings. Prometheus, casting a long shadow,  pulls at the F ring’s bands of material while smaller Atlas guards the edges of the A ring. The larger is 93 miles across at its…
Out on a Limb
 This thin neon line is a look through the backlit sky of Saturn, as color-calibrated by Gordan Ugarkovic. This is a natural-color segment of a larger photo, seen here. On September 15, 2006, Cassini captured one of the most breathtaking images of Saturn ever, during an eclipse event when Saturn was perfectly backlit by…
Out of the Shadows
A stunning image by Cassini, received today, of Daphnis splashing through the Keeler Gap (as seen in my last post). In this photo the sunlight is coming from the opposite direction though. Saturn’s massive shadow falls upon the rings on the right side of this image. Background stars can be seen through the rings. From…
Wave Forms
Cast shadows reveal some interesting structure in the waves sent up by little Daphnis in this image, taken by the Cassini spacecraft on June 26, 2009. Daphnis orbits Saturn within the 26-mile-wide Keeler gap in the A ring. Its gravity disrupts the edges of the gap, carving scalloped edges in the ring material and also,…
Explaining Enceladus
This JPL video highlights Enceladus and explains some of the recent discoveries about this mysterious moon of Saturn. Enjoy! more about “Explaining Enceladus“, posted with vodpod
Lights in the Dark 