A tribute to Cassini: 10 years spent revealing the secrets of Saturn and its moons

NASA’s Cassini space probe has been one of the agency’s most successful missions ever. It has been collecting intelligence on Saturn for a decade now, giving astronomers amazing new insights while several times exceeding expectations for its overall lifespan. Perhaps more importantly, the probe has supplemented its scientific data with incredible optical photos that have captured the public imagination on more than one occasion; Cassini actually managed to squeeze some real enthusiasm from a jaded and desensitized population. Now, though, its time has finally come. In 2016, after more than 11 years spent circling the famously ringed planet, Cassini will embark on its last mission ever.

A tribute to Cassini: 10 years spent revealing the secrets of Saturn and its moons







Just thought some of my fellow ATS users would be interested in this article.

Have to say that it seems like Cassini has achieved her mission in supreme fashion!

a reply to: andy06shake

Brillant. Cassini was an eye-opener.

But there'll be more like her.

This is but the beginning...

S&F!

Inthe uk they sell a ultra cheap wine that comes in 2liter bottles clearly designed for binge drinkers,i always chuckle at the name because such a mass produced chemical alcohol is made tho get people "out of this world" drunk.


www.amazon.co.uk...

this i the disgusting stuff^^^

also is there anyway to get full size image of the first pic in op's post? for new wallpaper

a reply to: haven123

also is there anyway to get full size image of the first pic in op's post? for new wallpaper

This image is all over the web but I think you'll like this one: pbs.twimg.com...

For explorers to click on…

Clickety

There was a certain amount of controversy over the launching of Cassini back then. As I recall, it was sent towards the sun for a close graze to slingshot it back in earths direction and then used earth's mass to slingshot it again into the outer system.

Because of the plutonium power source on board, many were concerned at the dangerous launch and then the dangerous rendezvous with earth before it's final toss out into the outer system. Sure glad neither of those doom scenarios came to be.

Hip hip hooray!

Getting interested in the Cassini mission was the best thing I've done since getting actively interested in space and astronomy. So many beautiful images from this very remote and wondrous world!

Raw Cassini images: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov...
While they come in black&white, it's possible to combine them into colour images, which can be (approximately) true-colour, or false colour if infrared and UV wavelengths are involved.

I've been creating such images as a hobby, here's a little video with some of them (watch full-screen and in HD): www.youtube.com...



Looking at the latest raw images, this has just come in (taken on July 3 2014)

RGB stack with no adjustments:


RGB stack adjusted to the approximate true colours of Saturn:


There's some reddish bands and a greenish band that I've never seen on Saturn before. You can also see the north polar hexagon.

a reply to: swanne

There are some gob-smacking images in this article from 2013: www.theatlantic.com...

All I can say is, Oh. My. God.

While oohing and aahing over photos that well deserve to be oohed and aahed over, spare a thought for the perfection to which the science of orbital mechanics has been brought by humanity. Manoeuvring through the space round Saturn is like whitewater rafting in a minefield, but Cassini has been doing it for ten years, fulfilling its mission orders perfectly.

Take a bow, NASA!

I hope we can keep this thread afloat with some juicy Cassini images.

One of the published images I came across (also featured in the article I linked in my previous post) is a remarkable black&white shot of five moons of Saturn, all in one frame. I didn't even know such a shot was possible!

But colour pictures are better than black&white, so here's my true-colour RGB composite, created from these raw Cassini images:
Red: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov...
Green: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov...
Blue: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov...


Full-sized image: www.pictureshack.us...

The moons are (left to right): Janus, Pandora, Enceladus, Mimas, and Rhea.

As you can see from looking at the raw images, the positions of the moons and the rings changed quite a lot from image to image; this is due to the spacecraft moving in its orbit around Saturn as it took those images. So creation of a single colour image required quite a bit of photoshopping: each of the five moons, as well as Saturn's rings, had to be aligned in a separate image, then the resulting "colourful" moons and the rings had to be carefully layered into a single image.

NASA image: www.nasa.gov...

Cool ATS threads about some of these moons:
Strange Moons: Enceladus, Frozen Water World
Strange Moons: Mimas....."That's No Moon!"
New NASA Photos Of Saturns Moon Rhea

Cassini has just flew close by some of Saturn's moons and took some great images.

Here are some colour images of Dione I created out of raw b&w images taken though infrared, green, and UV filters:





s27.postimg.org...
s27.postimg.org...

Saturn's rings peek out from behind Dione in this cool oblique image:



s13.postimg.org...

Also from the the recent flyby, this true-colour image of one of the most striking moons of Saturn: Enceladus.



Enceladus is covered in pure ice that is even whiter than fresh snow, and is considered to be the whitest body in the Solar System.

Here's another one of my images of Enceladus, from Cassini images taken a few years ago:



What a beautiful moon!

eriktheawful's thread on Enceladus, part of the excellent "Strange Moons" series: www.abovetopsecret.com...