Rock’n’roll heading for Titan

1 December 2004
Lalala, Bald James Dean, Hot Time and No Love are all heading for Titan. It is now seven years since these four pop songs, composed by musicians Julien Civange and Louis Haéri, stole aboard the European Huygens probe heading for Titan, the main moon of Saturn.

S@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club m7 ©

December 1, 2004

The usually bright B ring (at center) appears very dim in this view of the rings taken on the side of the rings that is not illuminated. The scene resembles a photographic negative, with bright and dark areas reversed (although in some places in the rings, the blackness of space is seen). From this viewing angle, the rings are lit from below: both dense and empty regions are dark, and regions of intermediate particle density are bright.
Night Side Ringplane - (PIC)

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me@rescam.org

December 1, 2004

As Cassini scientists work to understand the newly-exposed surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, they have found an interesting arrowhead-shaped feature, shown in the center of this synthetic aperture radar image. The feature is formed from two straight lines that intersect. Looking more closely, one can distinguish other linear features that seem to follow the left side of the "arrow" and perhaps interact in some way with a dark spot. Straight lines may represent fractures or faults in the icy crust, or they may form from material that has flowed or has been shaped by wind, either recently or in the distant past.
Follow the Arrow - (PIC)

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me@rescam.org

December 2, 2004

An intriguing knotted ringlet within the Encke Gap is the main attraction in this Cassini image. The Encke Gap is a small division near the outer edge of Saturn's rings. The tiny moon Pan orbits within the gap and maintains it. Many waves produced by orbiting moons are visible.
Mind the Gap - (PIC)

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me@rescam.org

An intriguing knotted ringlet

Misfit:

What does this mean? I ripple in time? The secret to life on Earth perhaps?

Inquiring minds what to know...


Curious Timmy

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these CASSINI pictures are so breathtakingly clear...to me, more and more, SATURN'S rings seem like a cosmic barcode...that we have not yet been able to decipher.

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PROUD TO BE TFFE!

Press release 2 December 2004

Cassini Huygens at Titans doorstep

The NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini Huygens mission to Saturn, which has already delivered stunning images and data of the ringed planet following insertion into the Saturnian system on 1st July this year, is poised to enter a crucial stage in its voyage of scientific discovery. In the early hours of Christmas morning [25th December], the Huygens probe will separate from the orbiter - its' home for the last seven years - to parachute down through the nitrogen-rich atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, where it will come to rest, though the exact nature of its final resting place remains a mystery. Scientists speculate that Huygens may find lakes or even oceans of a mixture of liquid ethane, methane and nitrogen.

The full story can be read here.

December 3, 2004

This close-up of the lit side of Saturn's outer B ring and the Cassini Division looks something like a phonograph record. There are subtle, wavelike patterns, hundreds of narrow features resembling a record's 'grooves' and a noticeable abrupt change in overall brightness beyond the dark gap near the right. To the left of the gap is the outer B ring with its sharp edge maintained by a strong gravitational resonance with the moon Mimas. To the right of the Huygens Gap are the plateau-like bands of the Cassini Division. The narrow ringlet within the gap is called the Huygens ringlet.
Outer B Ring Edge - (PIC)

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me@rescam.org

December 3, 2004

As it completed its first orbit of Saturn, Cassini zoomed in on the rings to catch this wondrous view of the shepherd moon Prometheus working its influence on the multi-stranded and kinked F ring. The F ring resolves into five separate strands in this closeup view. Potato-shaped Prometheus is seen here, connected to the ringlets by a faint strand of material. Imaging scientists are not sure exactly how Prometheus is interacting with the F ring here, but they have speculated that the moon might be gravitationally pulling material away from the ring. The ringlets are disturbed in several other places. In some, discontinuities or "kinks" in the ringlets are seen; in others, gaps in the diffuse inner strands are seen. All these features appear to be due to the influence of Prometheus. The image has been magnified by a factor of two, and contrast was enhanced, to aid visibility.
Thieving Moon - (PIC)

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me@rescam.org

December 3, 2004

Zigzagging kinks and knots dance around Saturn in this movie of the F ring from Cassini. From a great distance, as during Cassini's initial approach to Saturn in mid-2004, the F ring appears as a faint, knotted strand of material at the outer fringe of Saturn's immense ring system. From this close vantage point, just after the spacecraft rounded the planet to begin its second orbit, the F ring resolves into several ringlets with a bright central core. Scientists have only a rough idea of the lifetime of features like knots and clumps in Saturn's rings, and studies of images, such as those comprising this movie, will help them piece together this story. The view here is from Cassini's southern vantage point, below the ringplane. During the course of the movie sequence, Cassini was headed on a trajectory that took the spacecraft away from the planet and farther south, so that the rings appear to tilt farther upward. To help visualize this, note that the top portion of the F ring is closer to the spacecraft, while the bottom portion is farther away and curves around the far side of Saturn. The movie consists of 44 frames taken three minutes apart, so that the span of time represented in the sequence is almost exactly two hours, or about one-eight of a Saturn rotation. No enhancement was performed on the images.
Tilt and Whirl - (PICS) - (MOVIE)

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me@rescam.org

hope one next mission misfit on board ;-)))

December 6, 2004

Any doubts about the grandeur of Saturn's rings will be dissolved by sweeping portraits like this one from Cassini. There is a magnificent level of detail visible in this view, which captures almost the entire ring system -- from the thin, outer F ring to faint narrow features in the D ring, interior to the C ring. Along the ringplane, differences in brightness reveal the varying concentrations of the particles that comprise the rings. Cassini is viewing the rings from below. The portion of the rings near the top of the image is closer to the spacecraft, and the portion near the bottom is farther away.
Sweeping Beauty - (PIC)

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me@rescam.org

Second space Christmas for ESA: Huygens to begin its final journey to Titan
S@h Berkeley's Staff Friends Club m7 ©

December 7, 2004

Saturn's inner C ring spreads across the field of view, showing the characteristic plateau and wave-like structure for which it is famed. The center of this image shows an area approximately 75,000 kilometers (46,600 miles) from Saturn. The dark gap through the middle of the frame is the Colombo gap which houses the bright, narrow, eccentric Colombo ringlet, in resonance with the moon Titan.
Intricate C Ring Details - (PIC)

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me@rescam.org

December 8, 2004

New details on Iapetus are illuminated by reflected light from Saturn in this revealing Cassini image. Never-before-seen features on the Saturn-facing part of Iapetus’ bright trailing hemisphere are visible for the first time, including many dark spots, and a sharper view of a dark, circular structure that was first seen at very low resolution by NASA's Voyager 1 in 1980. The image shows mainly the night side of Iapetus; part of the far brighter sunlit side appears at the right and is overexposed due to the long integration time of 180 seconds. Despite this long exposure time, almost no blurring due to the spacecraft’s motion is apparent. This technique for imaging the night side of Iapetus will be used again during a flyby on Jan. 1, 2005, when Cassini will pass 13 times closer to the icy moon.
Seeing in the Dark - (PIC)

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me@rescam.org

December 8, 2004

These spectacular Cassini images of Saturn’s moon Iapetus show an enticing world of contrasts. These are the sharpest views of Iapetus from Cassini so far, and they represent better resolution than the best images of this moon achieved by NASA's Voyager spacecraft. Images obtained using ultraviolet, green, and infrared filters were combined to produce the enhanced color views at left and center; the image at the right was obtained in visible white light. The images on the bottom row are identical to those on top, with the addition of an overlying coordinate grid. These views show parts of the moon’s anti-Saturn side – the side that faces away from the ringed planet--which will not be imaged again by Cassini until Sept., 2007. In the central view, part of the moon’s eastern edge was not imaged and appears to be cut off. Iapetus is Saturn's third largest moon. It is famous for the dramatic contrasts in brightness on its surface – the leading hemisphere is as dark as a freshly-tarred street, and the trailing hemisphere and poles almost as bright as snow. Many impact craters can be seen in the bright terrain and in the transition zone between bright and dark, and for the first time in parts of the dark terrain. Also visible is a line of mountains that appear as a string of bright dots in the two color images at left, and on the eastern limb in the image at right. These mountains were originally detected in Voyager images, and might compete in height with the tallest mountains on Earth, Jupiter's moon Io and possibly even Mars. Further observations will be required to precisely determine their heights. Interestingly, the line of peaks is aligned remarkably close to the equator of Iapetus. The large circular feature rotating into view in the southern hemisphere is probably an impact structure.
Waning Iapetus - (PIC) - (MOVIE)

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me@rescam.org

December 8, 2004

This majestic view of Saturn captures several phenomena of interest to scientists working on the Cassini mission. The planet's nighttime atmosphere looms ahead -- an excellent place to search for storms and lightning. Saturn's shadow stretches across the rings, which will over the next four years receive their most thorough examination since Galileo discovered them in 1610. And barely visible near lower right just inside the F ring, is the small shepherd moon Prometheus. Researchers will explore the many moons of Saturn, including special ones like Prometheus that help maintain some of the rings and gaps in this complex and dynamic system.
The Adventure Ahead - (PIC)

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me@rescam.org

The large circular feature
> rotating into view in the southern hemisphere is probably an impact
> structure.
> <a> href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2.cgi?path=../multimedia/images/large-moons/images/PIA06145.jpg&type=image">Waning
> Iapetus[/url] - (<a> href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA06145.jpg">PIC[/url])
>

HOLY CRAP! IT'S THE DEATH STAR!

December 9, 2004

This view of Saturn's outer C ring shows the extreme variations in brightness, along with the subtle, large-scale wavy variations discovered 24 years ago by NASA's Voyager spacecraft. The notably dark Maxwell gap (near upper right) contains the bright, narrow and eccentric Maxwell ringlet, a Saturnian analog of the narrow Uranian epsilon ring. The gap also contains another very faint ringlet newly discovered by Cassini.
Outer C Ring Detail - (PIC)

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me@rescam.org

> The large circular feature
> > rotating into view in the southern hemisphere is probably an impact
> > structure.
> > <a>
> href="http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2.cgi?path=../multimedia/images/large-moons/images/PIA06145.jpg&type=image">Waning
> > Iapetus[/url] - (<a>
> href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA06145.jpg">PIC[/url])
> >
>
> HOLY CRAP! IT'S THE DEATH STAR!
>

That didn't escape the folks at NASA either...

That's no space station...