Another view of Saturn’s moon Iapetus (see previous post) shows the brighter surface illuminated by the sun, with a section of the darker surface visible near the moon’s equator. This dual-coloration of the 914-mile-wide moon was first observed by Giovanni Cassini in 1671. Noticing that the moon was only visible when on the western side…
Tag: space
Worlds Great and Small
A wonderful raw image from the Cassini spacecraft showing a crescent-lit Saturn and one of its 61 known moons. Honestly I’m not sure which moon this is. Could be Tethys, could be Titan, it’s hard to make out in this wide-angle view. Also in crescent, its night side is dimly lit by reflected “Saturnshine”. Cassini…
It’s a Small World
Another wonderful image from the Apollo Image Gallery, this scanned film image shows the ascent stage of the Eagle lander as photographed by Neil Armstrong, with the partially-lit Earth floating in the black lunar sky above. This is how our world looks from 239,000 miles away. Basically it would look 4 times larger than the…
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…
A MONDo Idea
Interesting article from New Scientist:Â A Phantom Menace to Dark Matter Theory by Marcus Chown. In a nutshell, there’s a new theory that tries to explain why stars aren’t chucked out of the galaxy when they are near the edges, like a little kid on the playground merry-go-round. (Hey, it happens.) Newtonian physics say that this…
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…
Lunar Landscape
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter has opened its eyes and sent back its first images since establishing orbit around the moon on June 23. The image above is from a region called Mare Nubium – “Sea of Clouds” – and is on the Earth-facing side of the moon. “Because of the deep shadowing, subtle topography is…
Rings Around Uranus
This ghostly image was taken by a Chilean ground-based telescope in 2002. It shows the enigmatic gas giant Uranus in near-infrared light, 7 of its 27 known moons visible. (For a labeled version of this image noting the moons, click here.) Seventh planet from the sun, Uranus’ year is 84 Earth-years long. Like the other…
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…
Lights in the Dark 