Posts Tagged saturn
Helene
I’m pretty sure it’s not intentional, but the cropping of this new image of Saturn’s moon Helene makes it really eye-catching. Framing really makes or breaks a photo. I’m in an artsy mood, alright? Also, color images can be gorgeous and breathtaking (and space ones often are), but there’s just something about black and white….
(Somewhere out there, a photographer-reader is nodding. Uh-huh. I see you.)
What’s happening on the surface of Saturn’s moon Helene? The moon was imaged in unprecedented detail last week as the robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn swooped to within two Earth diameters of the diminutive moon. Although conventional craters and hills appear, the above raw and unprocessed image also shows terrain that appears unusually smooth and streaked. Planetary astronomers will be inspecting these detailed images of Helene to glean clues about the origin and evolution of the 30-km across floating iceberg. Helene is also unusual because it circles Saturn just ahead of the large moon Dione, making it one of only four known moons to occupy a gravitational well known as a stable Lagrange point.
Tethys and Titan
Hard to decide what to post after yesterday’s anniversary and news… all I know is, posting retro space race ads seemed wildly inappropriate. So here you go. It’s Titan with Tethys in the distance, courtesy of Cassini.
What’s that behind Titan? It’s another of Saturn’s moons: Tethys. The robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn captured the heavily cratered Tethys slipping behind Saturn’s atmosphere-shrouded Titan late last year. The largest crater on Tethys, Odysseus, is easily visible on the distant moon. Titan shows not only its thick and opaque orange lower atmosphere, but also an unusual upper layer of blue-tinted haze. Tethys, at about 2 million kilometers distant, was twice as far from Cassini as was Titan when the above image was taken. In 2004, Cassini released the Hyugens probe which landed on Titan and provided humanity’s first views of the surface of the Solar System’s only known lake-bearing moon.
Enceladus Venting
An incredible image of Saturn’s moon Enceladus venting jets of ice:
What’s happening on the surface of Saturn’s moon Enceladus? Enormous ice jets are erupting. Giant plumes of ice have been photographed in dramatic fashion by the robotic Cassini spacecraft during this past weekend’s flyby of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Pictured above, numerous plumes are seen rising from long tiger-stripe canyons across Enceladus’ craggy surface. Several ice jets are even visible in the shadowed region of crescent Enceladus as they reach high enough to scatter sunlight. Other plumes, near the top of the above image, appear visible just over the moon’s sunlit edge. That Enceladus vents fountains of ice was first discovered on Cassini images in 2005, and has been under close study ever since. Continued study of the ice plumes may yield further clues as to whether underground oceans, candidates for containing life, exist on this distant ice world.
Saturn Equinox
This fantastic(ally SMALL view of a fantastically HUGE) picture of Saturn was assembled from images taken at Saturn’s equinox. (I’m always quite ready to show off the subtle variations in color present in the clouds of dear Saturn.)
How would Saturn look if its ring plane pointed right at the Sun? Before last month, nobody knew. Every 15 years, as seen from Earth, Saturn’s rings point toward the Earth and appear to disappear. The disappearing rings are no longer a mystery — Saturn’s rings are known to be so thin and the Earth is so near the Sun that when the rings point toward the Sun, they also point nearly edge-on at the Earth. Fortunately, in this third millennium, humanity is advanced enough to have a spacecraft that can see the rings during equinox from the side. Last month, that Saturn-orbiting spacecraft, Cassini, was able to snap a series of unprecedented pictures of Saturn’s rings during equinox. A digital composite of 75 such images is shown above. The rings appear unusually dark, and a very thin ring shadow line can be made out on Saturn’s cloud-tops. Objects sticking out of the ring plane are brightly illuminated and cast long shadows. Inspection of these images may help humanity understand the specific sizes of Saturn’s ring particles and the general dynamics of orbital motion.
You really MUST go and see the big version for yourself. Really. You must.
Best Picture Ever
Posted by Danielle in Entertainment, Picspam on September 15, 2009
I’m sure you’ll agree that this is quite possibly the BEST PICTURE EVER.
…whatdoyouMEAN you can’t tell what it is? Isn’t it obvious?? No? Well, you’ll just have to go and see for yourself. It is very clear that I can’t post this image on my website, so enjoy the 50px mosaic filter. I know I do.
Want a hint before you click? You’re the cautious type, I can tell.
Remember the rising of the starship Enterprise from the atmosphere of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, in the recent motion picture Star Trek, with magnificent Saturn and its rings dramatically coming into view in the background? It was a scene so highly regarded that its final shot was featured on the cover of Cinefex, the main motion picture industry magazine for visual effects.
Legally, with-permission-ly, “high resolution, digital shots from that scene” are exclusively available right over here. DO NOT MISS THIS DOWNLOAD. I am talking fully-detailed at over 6,000 pixels wide and tall Enterprise/Saturn yummy goodness. It definitely makes the most beautiful *desktop* ever, if I do say so myself.
Enjoy.
Iapetus
Saturn has some weird moons. Check this bad boy out.
What has happened to Saturn’s moon Iapetus? Vast sections of this strange world are dark as coal, while others are as bright as ice. The composition of the dark material is unknown, but infrared spectra indicate that it possibly contains some dark form of carbon. Iapetus also has an unusual equatorial ridge that makes it appear like a walnut. To help better understand this seemingly painted moon, NASA directed the robotic Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn to swoop within 2,000 kilometers in 2007. Pictured above, from about 75,000 kilometers out, Cassini’s trajectory allowed unprecedented imaging of the hemisphere of Iapetus that is always trailing. A huge impact crater seen in the south spans a tremendous 450 kilometers and appears superposed on an older crater of similar size. The dark material is seen increasingly coating the easternmost part of Iapetus, darkening craters and highlands alike. Close inspection indicates that the dark coating typically faces the moon’s equator and is less than a meter thick. A leading hypothesis is that the dark material is mostly dirt leftover when relatively warm but dirty ice sublimates. An initial coating of dark material may have been effectively painted on by the accretion of meteor-liberated debris from other moons. This and other images from Cassini’s Iapetus flyby are being studied for even greater clues.
Friday Picspam, part 8
Eventually I had to get back to the series naming I started with, right? This week’s edition would be better-named as “Randomspam”, but oh well. To start, a lovely image of the Iris Nebula by Alvin Jeng.
Next, a page from the Dunhuang Star Atlas, a Chinese work dating from 649-684 AD:
This ancient Chinese map of planet Earth’s northern sky is part of the Dunhuang Star Atlas, one of the most impressive documents in the history of astronomy. The oldest complete star atlas known, it dates to the years 649 to 684, discovered at the Silk Road town of Dunhuang in 1907. A recent analysis that examines the accuracy and projections used to make it notes the atlas marks positions of over 1,300 stars and outlines 257 Chinese star groups or asterisms. The star positions in the hand drawn atlas were found to be accurate to within a few degrees. In this example showing the north polar region, a very recognizable Big Dipper, part of the modern constellation Ursa Major, lies along the bottom of the chart. An additional 12 charts depict equatorial regions in 30 degree sections and also include a grouping resembling the modern constellation Orion. The atlas is on display at the British Library in London to celebrate the International Year of Astronomy.
On June 15th, the LOIRP released another Lunar Orbiter image, this time of the Apollo 12 landing site:
(There’s also a version at the site without annotations, if you want it. Both images come in a large version.)
Finally, as Saturn approaches its equinox in August, Cassini is recording interesting nearly-edge-on images of Saturn’s rings, and a tiny moon among them:
(You really need to see them large to get the full effect. I hate how image sizing puts kinks in diagonal lines, blah.)
To understand what you’re seeing, I highly recommend this article by Phil Plait, as he does a great job explaining what’s going on and why it’s significant. Below is another view of the tiny moon Daphnis, chugging along in Saturn’s rings.
Friday Picspam, part 7
Above, yesterday’s APOD in beautiful shades of blue; below, today’s NASA Image of the Day in beautiful shades of trippy-reflection-of-shuttle-controls.
Hyperion looks like a sponge. If they sold Hyperion-brand dish sponges, I’d buy ‘em. I admit it.
Colors in image below are less visible than they appear. Still, I like it:
Finally, if you haven’t seen Lunch Bag Art, you’re really missing out; he featured the new Star Trek movie on May 11:
Shadow of Demarcation
So it’s big. You can scroll. Get the full-size version here.
Saturn’s rings cast a dramatic shadow separating the blues and greens of the planet’s northern hemisphere from the creamy pastels coloring the southern hemisphere.
Moons in transit
This amazing quadruple transit was released by HubbleSite on St. Patrick’s Day — what a visual treat! I definitely recommend getting it in a larger size, if you have a chance! :D
Saturn’s comparatively paper-thin rings are tilted edge on to Earth every 15 years. Because the orbits of Saturn’s major satellites are in the ring plane, too, this alignment gives astronomers a rare opportunity to capture a truly spectacular parade of celestial bodies crossing the face of Saturn. Leading the parade is Saturn’s giant moon Titan — larger than the planet Mercury. The frigid moon’s thick nitrogen atmosphere is tinted orange with the smoggy byproducts of sunlight interacting with methane and nitrogen. Several of the much smaller icy moons that are closer in to the planet line up along the upper edge of the rings. Hubble’s exquisite sharpness also reveals Saturn’s banded cloud structure.
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