January 18, 2005

This Cassini image of the Saturn-facing side of icy Mimas reveals the craters and long, linear chasms that cross the moon's surface. Many of the large craters on Mimas have whimsical names from the legend of King Arthur, such as Launcelot, Merlin and Gallahad. Mimas is 398 kilometers (247 miles) across. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Dec. 14, 2004, at a distance of 902,000 kilometers (560,000 miles) from Mimas and at a Sun-Mimas-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 26 degrees. The image scale is 5.4 kilometers (3.4 miles) per pixel. The image has been magnified by a factor of two and contrast enhanced to aid visibility.
Battered Icy Mimas - (PIC)

---

me@rescam.org

More of Titan’s secrets to be unveiled on 21 January

18 January 2005
ESA PR 04-2005. One week after the successful completion of Huygens’ mission to the atmosphere and surface of Titan, the largest and most mysterious moon of Saturn, the European Space Agency is bringing together some of the probe’s scientists to present and discuss the first results obtained from the data collected by the instruments.

After a 4000 million kilometre journey through the Solar System that lasted almost seven years, the Huygens probe plunged into the hazy atmosphere of Titan at 11:13 CET on 14 January and landed safely on its frozen ground at 13:45 CET. It continued transmitting from the surface for several hours, even after the Cassini orbiter dropped below the horizon and stopped recording the data to relay them towards Earth. Cassini received excellent data from the surface of Titan for 1 hour and 12 minutes.

More than 474 megabits of data were received in 3 hours 44 minutes from Huygens, including some 350 pictures collected during the descent and on the ground, which revealed a landscape apparently modelled by erosion with drain channels, shoreline-like features and even pebble-shaped objects on the surface.


Full Story

Greetings from Germany NRW
Ulli S@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club m7 ©

January 17, 2005

This movie, showing six of Saturn's small ring-region moons as they raced around the planet, was made from images taken by the Cassini spacecraft on Nov. 15, 2004. The moons appear in following order (their diameters are given in parentheses): Janus (181 kilometers, or 113 miles), Atlas (32 kilometers, or 20 miles), Epimetheus (116 kilometers, or 72 miles), Prometheus (102 kilometers, or 63 miles), Pandora (84 kilometers, or 52 miles) and Pan (20 kilometers, or 12 miles). Each moon is marked by a colored circle that corresponds to the key at lower left. While little detail on the moons is visible, it is possible to discern the irregular shapes of the larger ones seen in this movie. The rings are overexposed due to the long exposure times used (2 seconds per image): doing so makes the smaller, fainter moons (especially Pan) easier to detect. The direction of the moons' motion is prograde, or clockwise as seen from Cassini's vantage point beneath the ring plane. In addition to the moons, knots in the F ring are visible here, as are several faint ringlets on both sides of that ring¿s bright core. Faint knots also appear sporadically within the narrow Encke gap, where tiny Pan resides. The movie consists of 73 images and spans a period of just over 14.5 hours, about an orbital period of the particles in the F ring. The individual frames were taken at 12 minute intervals in visible light with Cassini's narrow angle camera. The spacecraft was about 4.5 million kilometers (2.8 million miles) from Saturn when the images were taken. Image scale is approximately 26.5 kilometers (16.5 miles) per pixel.
Race of the Moons - (MOVIE)

---

me@rescam.org

January 17, 2005

This Cassini image shows predominantly the impact-scarred leading hemisphere of Saturn's icy moon Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across). The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Dec. 12, 2004, at a distance of 2 million kilometers (1.2 million miles) from Rhea and at a Sun-Rhea-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 30 degrees. The image scale is about 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) per pixel. The image has been magnified by a factor of two and contrast enhanced to aid visibility.
Rhea and Her Craters - (PIC)

---

me@rescam.org

Titan probe records orange landscape, Scientists excited by images of moon
DARMSTADT, Germany – Pictures snapped by the Titan probe and a low, whooshing sound picked up by an on-board microphone drew gasps and applause from scientists yesterday, as the mission to Saturn's moon continued its breathtaking revelations from more than 900 million miles across the solar system. Data beamed back from Titan, one of Saturn's moons, sketched a picture of a pale orange landscape with a spongy surface topped by a thin crust. "The closest analogues are wet sand or clay," said John Zarnecki, in charge of instruments analyzing Titan's surface. Scientists at the European Space Agency were clearly excited about the success of the mission, which had confirmed some long-held theories and produced startling surprises...

---

me@rescam.org

Those are the best yet Ulli.
THX

---

Account frozen...

Enthusiast compositions of the Huygens images

Since the images of the Huygens probe -- descending to Titan (moon of Saturn) -- have been published on the net, the people in IRC channel #space on irc.freenode.net started to play with these raw images and made some mosaics of these images.

This page summarizes some of the more interesting results. You can click the thumbnails to see full sized versions.
...


Full Story and a lot of more Images

Greetings from Germany NRW
Ulli S@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club m7 ©

more Infos


Standing on the Surface of Titan


Huygens mission an overwhelming success

Greetings from Germany NRW
Ulli S@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club m7 ©

I see rocks, but it looks like it landed in an extraterrestrial wadi!
I take it that there's no Kodachrome on-board, but that's a great photograph nonetheless.
Thanks, Dogbytes!

---

[b]Video compilation of Huygens probe landing

[url=http://esamultimedia.esa.int/multimedia/esoc/virtualtour/content_full.html]Virtual tour of ESA's Spacecraft Operations Center

---

me@rescam.org

January 15, 2004

Sounds of Titan
Audio data collected by the Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument (HASI), which includes an acoustic sensor, during Huygens' descent, 14 January 2005.

1. Speeding through Titan's haze
This recording is a laboratory reconstruction of the sounds heard by Huygens' microphones. Several sound samples, taken at different times during the descent, are here combined together and give a realistic reproduction of what a traveller on board Huygens would have heard during one minute of the descent through Titan's atmosphere.

2. Radar echos from Titan's surface
This recording was produced by converting into audible sounds some of the radar echoes received by Huygens during the last few kilometres of its descent onto Titan. As the probe approaches the ground, both the pitch and intensity increase. Scientists will use intensity of the echoes to speculate about the nature of the surface.

Panarama

Ground Shot

[b]Enlargements

---

Account frozen...

> Some new pics
> have just appeared. Quite amazing.
>

Wow! Amazing indeed. Thanks for the link 3Q.

---

Some new pics have just appeared. Quite amazing.

For members in the UK (and some parts of mainland Europe?)........
Last night at 23.30 there was a live broadcast from the mission HQ in Germany on BBC2 which showed 3 of the first images from Titan. Also an explanation that instead of the expected 700+ images, we will only get 300+.

Another update programme is being broadcast today @ 14.20 UK.

---

January 14, 2004

Huygens Descent into Another World - (VIDEO)
Martin Tomasko, principal investigator for the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer on the Huygens probe, describes some of the first images the probe beamed back from Titan on Jan. 14, 2005. This 2 minute, 30 second clip was taken from the European Space Agency's live coverage of Huygens historic descent to the surface of Titan.

---

me@rescam.org

January 14, 2005

Students Observe Saturn Through Radio Eyes
As data comes back from the Huygens probe at Saturn's giant moon Titan, students are conducting real-time science experiments using the Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope in California's Mojave Desert. The project is run by the Lewis Center for Educational Research...

---

me@rescam.org

January 14, 2005

NASA Salutes Successful Huygens Probe - (PIC)
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe today offered congratulations to the European Space Agency (ESA) on the successful touchdown of its Huygens probe on Saturn's moon Titan. The probe sent back data for more than 90 minutes after reaching the surface. These are the first raw images returned by the ESA Huygens probe DISR camera after the probe descended through the atmosphere of Titan...

---

me@rescam.org

January 14, 2005

The sunlit face of Saturn's rings shows magnificent detail in this image taken in near infrared light. Most notable is the transition in brightness toward the outer edges of the image, due to differences in composition and ring particle density. The image was obtained from Cassini's vantage point beneath the ring plane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Dec. 12, 2004, at a distance of 1.8 million kilometers (1.1 million miles) from Saturn, through a broadband filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 862 nanometers. The image scale is about 11 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel.
Light and Dark Rings - (PIC)

---

me@rescam.org

Absolutely stunning. Congradutations Europe!

---

Account frozen...