{"id":13011,"date":"2016-08-09T16:46:31","date_gmt":"2016-08-09T20:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=13011"},"modified":"2016-08-15T12:34:13","modified_gmt":"2016-08-15T16:34:13","slug":"saturn-images-shadowing-the-rings-the-clouds-in-the-infrared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hobbyspace.com\/Blog\/?p=13011","title":{"rendered":"Saturn images: Shadowing the rings & The clouds in the infrared"},"content":{"rendered":"

A\u00a0couple of wonderful images\u00a0of Saturn released by NASA this week. (Find more great Saturn system images here<\/a>):<\/p>\n

Long Divisions<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"PIA20494-800x600[1]\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The shadow of Saturn on the rings, which stretched across all of the rings earlier in Cassini’s mission (see PIA08362<\/a>), now barely makes it past the Cassini division.<\/p>\n

The changing length of the shadow marks the passing of the seasons on Saturn. As the planet nears its northern-hemisphere solstice in May 2017, the shadow will get even shorter. At solstice, the shadow’s edge will be about 28,000 miles (45,000 kilometers) from the planet’s surface, barely making it past the middle of the B ring.<\/p>\n

The moon Mimas is a few pixels wide, near the lower left in this image.<\/p>\n

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 35 degrees above the ring plane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on May 21, 2016.<\/p>\n

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 2.0 million miles (3.2 million kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 120 miles (190 kilometers) per pixel.<\/p>\n

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 the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, 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.<\/p>\n

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http:\/\/saturn.jpl.nasa.gov<\/a> and\u00a0http:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/cassini<\/a>. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http:\/\/ciclops.org<\/a>.<\/p>\n

View all Images<\/a><\/p>\n

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Infrared Saturn Clouds<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"7395_saturn_gill_infrared[1]\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This false-color view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows clouds in Saturn’s northern hemisphere. The view was produced by space imaging enthusiast Kevin M. Gill, who also happens to be an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.<\/p>\n

The view was made using images taken by Cassini’s wide-angle camera on July 20, 2016, using a combination of spectral filters sensitive to infrared light at 750, 727 and 619 nanometers.<\/p>\n

Filters like these, which are sensitive to absorption and scattering of sunlight by methane in Saturn’s atmosphere, have been useful throughout Cassini’s mission for determining the structure and depth of cloud features in the atmosphere.<\/p>\n

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. 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.<\/p>\n

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/cassini<\/a> and http:\/\/saturn.jpl.nasa.gov<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Image Credit: NASA\/JPL-Caltech\/Space Science Institute\/Kevin M. Gill<\/em><\/p>\n

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