Category Archives: Europa, Titan, & other deep space sites

Videos: Cassini and the wonders of Saturn + An overview of the Voyager mission

A video of highlights of the many discoveries and marvelous images made by the Cassini mission to the Saturn system:

Checkout the Cassini: The Grand Finale: Cassini’s ‘Inside-Out’ Rings Movie:

This movie sequence of images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft offers a unique perspective on Saturn’s ring system. Cassini captured the images from within the gap between the planet and its rings, looking outward as the spacecraft made one of its final dives through the gap as part of the mission’s Grand Finale. Using its wide-angle camera, Cassini took the 21 images in the sequence over a span of about four minutes during its dive through the gap on Aug. 20, 2017. The images have an original size of 512 x 512 pixels; the smaller image size allowed for more images to be taken over the short span of time. [Full caption]
A talk by Alan Cummings, Senior Research Scientist at Caltech and Voyager team member since 1973, about the two Voyager spacecraft and their travels out into interstellar space:

From the caption:

In 1977, NASA’s twin Voyager spacecraft embarked on an incredible journey to the outer planets and beyond. After delivering stunning images of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, the probes sailed on to study the boundary of our heliosphere, the bubble that encompasses our sun, planets and solar wind. Voyager 1 crossed that frontier in August 2012, becoming the first human-made object in interstellar space, while Voyager 2 is expected to enter the space between the stars in the coming years. This live public talk at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, revisits highlights of the last 40 years and discuss what may lie ahead for the intrepid Voyagers.

Video: “A World Unveiled: Cassini at Titan”

The Cassini-Huygens mission ends on September 15th when the Cassini spacecraft will plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere. Looking back on the 13 years of exploring the Saturn system, the discoveries about Titan, on which the Huygens probe landed, were among the richest of the whole program: Cassini: The Grand Finale: Cassini Prepares to Say Goodbye to a True Titan

Saturn’s giant, hazy moon Titan has been essential to NASA’s Cassini mission during its 13 thrilling years of exploration there. Cassini and the European Huygens probe have revealed a fascinating world of lakes and seas, great swaths of dunes, and a complex atmosphere with weather – with intriguing similarities to Earth. Titan has also been an engine for the mission, providing gravity assists that propelled the spacecraft on its adventures around the ringed planet. For more about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

Over the course of its 13-year mission at Saturn, Cassini has made 127 close flybys of Titan, with many more-distant observations. Cassini also dropped off the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe, which descended through Titan’s atmosphere to land on the surface in January 2005.

Successes for Cassini during its mission include the revelation that, as researchers had theorized, there were indeed bodies of open liquid hydrocarbons on Titan’s surface. Surprisingly, it turned out Titan’s lakes and seas are confined to the poles, with almost all of the liquid being at northern latitudes in the present epoch. Cassini found that most of Titan has no lakes, with vast stretches of linear dunes closer to the equator similar to those in places like Namibia on Earth. The spacecraft observed giant hydrocarbon clouds hovering over Titan’s poles and bright, feathery ones that drifted across the landscape, dropping methane rain that darkened the surface. There were also indications of an ocean of water beneath the moon’s icy surface.

The instruments on Cassini allowed for seeing Titan in different ways: Cassini: The Grand Finale: Two Titans

These views were obtained with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 21, 2017. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create the natural-color view at left. The false-color view at right was made by substituting an infrared image (centered at 938 nanometers) for the red color channel.

These two views of Saturn’s moon Titan exemplify how NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has revealed the surface of this fascinating world. > Full image and caption

More about the final days of Cassini: Cassini: The Grand Finale: Cassini to Begin Final Five Orbits Around Saturn.

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Snapshots from deep space: Jupiter’s many colors, kinks in Saturn’s rings, & clouds on Titan

Some recent imagery from NASA spacecraft:

** Jupiter’s Clouds of Many Colors | NASA  (Click for larger image)

NASA’s Juno spacecraft was racing away from Jupiter following its seventh close pass of the planet when JunoCam snapped this image on May 19, 2017, from about 29,100 miles (46,900 kilometers) above the cloud tops. The spacecraft was over 65.9 degrees south latitude, with a lovely view of the south polar region of the planet.

This image was processed to enhance color differences, showing the amazing variety in Jupiter’s stormy atmosphere. The result is a surreal world of vibrant color, clarity and contrast. Four of the white oval storms known as the “String of Pearls” are visible near the top of the image. Interestingly, one orange-colored storm can be seen at the belt-zone boundary, while other storms are more of a cream color.

JunoCam’s raw images are available for the public to peruse and process into image products at:  www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam

More information about Juno is at: http://www.nasa.gov/juno and http://missionjuno.swri.edu

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/Gerald Eichstädt /Seán Doran

** Cassini: The Grand Finale: Grooves and Kinks in the Rings (Click for larger image)

Many of the features seen in Saturn’s rings are shaped by the planet’s moons. This view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows two different effects of moons that cause waves in the A ring and kinks in the F ring.

The A ring, which takes up most of the image on the left side, displays waves caused by orbital resonances with moons that orbit beyond the rings. Kinks, clumps and other structures in the F ring (the small, narrow ring at right) can be caused by interactions between the ring particles and the moon Prometheus, which orbits just interior to the ring, as well as collisions between small objects within the ring itself.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 22 degrees above the ring plane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on March 22, 2017.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 63,000 miles (101,000 kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 7 degrees. Image scale is 1,979 feet (603 meters) per pixel.

** Cassini: The Grand Finale: Northern Summer on Titan (Click for larger image)

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft sees bright methane clouds drifting in the summer skies of Saturn’s moon Titan, along with dark hydrocarbon lakes and seas clustered around the north pole.

Compared to earlier in Cassini’s mission, most of the surface in the moon’s northern high latitudes is now illuminated by the sun. (See here for a view of the northern hemisphere from 2007.) Summer solstice in the Saturn system occurred on May 24, 2017.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 9, 2017, using a spectral filter that preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. Cassini obtained the view at a distance of about 315,000 miles (507,000 kilometers) from Titan.

The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and https://www.nasa.gov/cassini.

 

Cassini: Cloud bands streak across Saturn’s moon Titan

More good stuff from Cassini as it nears its Grand Finale.

Cassini: The Grand Finale: Cloud Bands Streak Across Titan 

May 9, 2017: NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured this view of bands of bright, feathery methane clouds drifting across Saturn’s moon Titan on May 7, 2017.

The view was obtained during a distant (non-targeted) flyby, during which Cassini passed 303,000 miles (488,000 kilometers) above the moon’s surface. Although Cassini will have no further close, targeted flybys of Titan, the spacecraft continues to observe the giant moon and its atmosphere from a distance.

The dark regions at top are Titan’s hydrocarbon lakes and seas.

Two versions of this image are presented here, one with stronger enhancement (figure A) and one with much softer enhancement (figure B). See Titan’s Northern Summer Clouds​ for another view of these clouds.

The image was taken on May 7, 2017, at a distance of 316,000 miles (508,000 kilometers). The view is an orthographic projection centered on 57 degrees north latitude, 48 degrees west longitude. An orthographic view is most like the view seen by a distant observer. Image scale is about 2 miles (3 kilometers) per pixel.

As summer approaches in Titan’s northern hemisphere, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has been monitoring Titan, anticipating an increase in cloud activity at high northern latitudes. [Larger version]
The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of Caltech in Pasadena, California, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

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Video: A 360-degree view of Cassini diving between Saturn and the rings

This interactive video from NASA JPL allows you to scan Saturn and the rings as the Cassini spacecraft makes one of its dives between the two before the Grand Finale in September.

Dive between Saturn and its rings with NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in the final chapter of its mission. In this 360-degree video, you are traveling along with the spacecraft at tens of thousands of miles per hour as it makes one of 22 planned dives through this unexplored gap. The first dive of Cassini’s Grand Finale takes place on April 26, 2017, with additional dives about once a week. 

Key Dates
  • April 22: Titan 126 Flyby at 6:08 a.m. UTC (11:08 p.m. PDT on April 21)
  • April 23: First Grand Finale Orbit Begins at 3:46 a.m. UTC (8:46 p.m. PDT on April 22)
  • April 26: First Ringplane Crossing at 9 a.m. UTC (2 a.m. PDT)
  • May 24: Northern Summer Solstice Begins
  • Sept. 15: Cassini’s Final Entry into Saturn’s Atmosphere begins at 10:44 a.m. UTC (3:44 a.m. PDT). Spacecraft loss of signal comes one minute later at 10:45 a.m. UTC (3:45 a.m. PDT).
  • Sept. 15: Final signal received on Earth at 12:08 p.m. UTC (5:08 a.m. PDT)

See also these other recent Cassini posts:

Here is a view of Earth and the Moon as seen recently by Cassini through the rings: NASA Image Shows Earth Between the Rings of Saturn | NASA

This cropped, zoomed-in version of the image makes it easier to see Earth’s moon — a smaller, fainter dot to the left of our planet’s bright dot. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute Full image and caption

Here is a new video of Saturn’s hexagon north pole using Cassini images: Cassini: Mission to Saturn: Saturn’s Hexagon in Motion

North pole of Saturn made from Cassini images. Different wavelengths of light from ultraviolet to visible to infrared have been assigned colors.

The gray scale version:

The black and white version.

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