I’m a big fan of the Cassini probe, still running around taking awesome pictures of Saturn and her hodgepodge of moons. Above, a natural-color view of Titan’s atmosphere — more precisely, a dent in Titan’s atmosphere:

This view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft looks toward the south polar region of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, and shows a depression within the moon’s orange and blue haze layers near the south pole.

The moon’s high altitude haze layer appears blue here; whereas, the main atmospheric haze is orange. The difference in color could be due to particle size of the haze. The blue haze likely consists of smaller particles than the orange haze.

The depressed or attenuated layer appears in the transition area between the orange and blue hazes about a third of the way in from the left edge of the narrow-angle image. The moon’s south pole is in the upper right of this image. This view suggests Titan’s north polar vortex, or hood, is beginning to flip from north to south.

The southern pole of Titan is going into darkness as the sun advances towards the north with each passing day. The upper layer of Titan’s hazes is still illuminated by sunlight.

Below, the icy, tectonically active moon, Enceladus:

On Oct. 5, 2008, just after coming within 25 kilometers (15.6 miles) of the surface of Enceladus, NASA’s Cassini captured this stunning mosaic as the spacecraft sped away from this geologically active moon of Saturn.

Craters and cratered terrains are rare in this view of the southern region of the moon’s Saturn-facing hemisphere. Instead, the surface is replete with fractures, folds, and ridges–all hallmarks of remarkable tectonic activity for a relatively small world. In this enhanced-color view, regions that appear blue-green are thought to be coated with larger grains than those that appear white or gray.

Portions of the tiger stripe fractures, or sulci, are visible along the terminator at lower right, surrounded by a circumpolar belt of mountains. The icy moon’s famed jets emanate from at least eight distinct source regions, which lie on or near the tiger stripes. However, in this view, the most prominent feature is Labtayt Sulci, the approximately one-kilometer (0.6 miles) deep northward-trending chasm located just above the center of the mosaic.

Near the top, the conspicuous ridges are Ebony and Cufa Dorsae. This false-color mosaic was created from 28 images obtained at seven footprints, or pointing positions, by Cassini’s narrow-angle camera. At each footprint, four images using filters sensitive to ultraviolet, visible and infrared light (spanning wavelengths from 338 to 930 nanometers) were combined to create the individual frames. The mosaic is an orthographic projection centered at 64.49 degrees south latitude, 283.87 west longitude, and it has an image scale of 196 kilometers (122.5 miles) per pixel. The original images ranged in resolution from 180 meters (594 feet) to 288 meters (950 feet) per pixel and were acquired at distances ranging from 30,000 to 48,000 kilometers (18,750 to 30,000 miles) as the spacecraft receded from Enceladus. The view was acquired at a Sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 73 degrees.

Why not say “I love you, space nerd” with a set of Rihga Royal Hotel Planetary Chocolates?

Combining astronomy and good eats sounds too good to be true. But in their celestial collection of planetary chocolates, chocolatier L’éclat of the Righa Royal Hotel Japan have done just that. The chocolaty solar system includes Mercury (coconut mango), Venus (cream lemon), Earth (cacao), Mars (orange praline), Jupiter (vanilla), Saturn (rum raisin), Uranus (milk tea) and Neptune (capuccino) – sorry, Pluto is no longer considered a planet.

Each are sold individually (400 yen) but if you order the set (3,800 yen) they’ll throw in the Sun – a flaring delicacy of criollo chocolate and pineapple. You can order online (3,200 yen; Sun not included)or you can use a forwarding service.
— Spoon & Tamago

Today’s APOD is not to be missed! (But I’m a sucker for images of Saturn and the moons thereof.)

Orbiting in the plane of Saturn’s rings, Saturnian moons have a perpetual ringside view of the gorgeous gas giant planet. Of course, while passing near the ring plane the Cassini spacecraft also shares their stunning perspective. The rings themselves can be seen slicing across the middle of this Cassini snapshot from May of last year. The scene features Titan, largest, and Dione, third largest moon of Saturn. Remarkably thin, the bright rings still cast arcing shadows across the planet’s cloud tops at the bottom of the frame. Pale Dione is about 1,100 kilometers across and orbits over 300,000 kilometers from the visible outer edge of the A ring. Dione is seen through Titan’s atmospheric haze. At 5,150 kilometers across, Titan is about 2.3 million kilometers from Cassini, while Dione is 3.2 million kilometers away.
Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA

Space Beach 2, composite image by John Williams

My good friend John Williams made this captivating composite of space and terrestrial images. I love the combination of elements — spectacular space art!
Saturn image credit: NASA/JPL

Moonlight of Saturn Necklace by Lisa Zamcho (BrightFireBeads @ Etsy)

Steampunk? Saturn? Why yes, I’ll have some of that!

A brass Saturn is surrounded by gears and red Swarovski Crystal Moonlets. An antique pocket watch movement and a hand tooled filigree serve as the base in this piece.

Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA; Color Composite: Jean-Luc Dauvergne

Storms are more interesting when they’re on other planets. Not that Earth’s storms are boring, mind you — but isn’t a Saturn storm more exciting by default?

Late last year, a new, remarkably bright storm erupted in Saturn’s northern hemisphere. Amateur astronomers first spotted it in early December, with the ringed gas giant rising in planet Earth’s predawn sky. Orbiting Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft was able to record this close-up of the complex disturbance from a distance of 1.8 million kilometers on December 24th. Over time, the storm has evolved, spreading substantially in longitude, and now stretches far around the planet. Saturn’s thin rings are also seen slicing across this space-based view, casting broad shadows on the planet’s southern hemisphere.

I know, I know, I have a thing for Soviet retro-futurist art… but you have to admit, these Soviet illustrations are nothing short of stunning! (Info and images via Dark Roasted Blend.)

Karl Gilzin’s book ["Travel to Distant Worlds"] (from 1958) contained some pretty neat illustrations … [b]ut the illustrations got even better once this book was translated into Russian, and some nameless artist from DetGiz Publishing House in 1960 drew these inspiring scenes…

I couldn’t decide what planet I liked best, so here’s Saturn:

And here’s Mars:

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Saw this lovely new Cassini image at Universe Today:

Rhea, saturn’s second largest moon sits in front of the rings, joined by two smaller moons in the background. Rhea (1528 kilometers, 949 miles across) is in the center foreground. Janus (179 kilometers, 111 miles across) can be seen beyond the rings on the right of the image. Prometheus (86 kilometers, 53 miles across) is visible orbiting between the main rings and the thin F ring on the left of the image. Lit terrain seen on Rhea is on the area between that moon’s trailing hemisphere and anti-Saturn side. This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane.

Gorgeous stuff, I’m loving everything Cassini sends back to us!

Credit: NASA/JPL/SSI; Color composite: Emily Lakdawalla

Cassini is probably my favorite planetary explorer to date. There’s just something about Saturn, it’s a playground of wonders. I’m amazed at the variation in the moons, from fuzzy atmospheres to dirty iceballs to… Death Stars.

Still, as far as I’m concerned, as satellites go… east or west, home is best.

Earth's Moon, as seen from Space Shuttle Discovery (Credit: STS-131 crew)

I first saw this marvelous bit of latte art here, and failing to find a larger version on Flickr, traced it here and eventually to Reddit. (Where it’s still only 400×300.) It really bugs me when I can’t find the original version and can’t be sure of the “source” being the actual original, but PhotoBucket seems to be as close as it gets, so there you go.

I want a latte just like this. It would MAKE my DAY. Actually, it would make my MONTH.