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Summer is slowly coming to Saturn’s northern hemisphere. The north pole, which was in the midst of a 7-year-long winter when Cassini arrived in 2004, is now seen basking in the sunlight of mid-spring. Cassini is taking full advantage of the sunlight to capture these amazing views of the north polar hexagon and the myriad of storms, large and small, that comprise the weather systems in the polar region.
This view is centered on terrain at 75 degrees north latitude, 322 degrees west longitude. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Feb. 26, 2013 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 752 nanometers.
The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 383,000 miles (616,000 kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 48 degrees. Image scale is 21 miles (33 kilometers) per pixel.
ikenbotNile-Like River Spotted on Saturn Moon Titan
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has captured a crisp image of a long river cutting across Saturn’s huge moon Titan.
Image: A river near the north pole of Saturn’s moon Titan, imaged by the Cassini spacecraft on Sept. 26, 2012. The river valley stretches more than 250 miles from its ‘headwaters’ to a large sea and likely contains hydrocarbons. Credit: NASA/JPL–Caltech/ASI
The hydrocarbon-filled river stretches more than 250 miles (400 kilometers) from its source to a large sea near frigid Titan’s north pole. Cassini’s radar image is the first high-resolution shot ever taken of such a vast river system on a world beyond Earth, researchers said, and scientists are comparing it to Earth’s Nile River in Egypt.
“Though there are some short, local meanders, the relative straightness of the river valley suggests it follows the trace of at least one fault, similar to other large rivers running into the southern margin of this same Titan sea,” Jani Radebaugh, a Cassini radar team associate at Brigham Young University, said in a statement.
Saturn’s B ring is spread out in all its glory in this image from Cassini. Scientists are trying to better understand the origin and nature of the various structures seen in the B ring.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Saturn’s B ring is the densest and most massive of all the rings. The C ring is also visible inside the B ring and the A ring puts on an appearance beyond the Cassini Division near the top and bottom of the image.
This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 7 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on July 22, 2012.
The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 201,000 miles (324,000 kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 134 degrees. Image scale is 10 miles (16 kilometers) per pixel.
Tethys may not be tiny by normal standards, but when it is captured alongside Saturn, it can’t help but seem pretty small.
Even Saturn’s rings appear to dwarf Tethys (660 miles, or 1,062 kilometers across), which is in the upper left of the image, although scientists believe the moon to be many times more massive than the entire ring system combined.
This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 18 degrees below the ringplane. The image was taken in green light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Aug. 19, 2012.
The Jupiter-Moon conjunction as seen from the moon’s horizon.
Amazing new photos from NASA’s Cassini probe orbiting Saturn reveal a dizzying glimpse into a monster storm raging on the ringed planet’s north pole.
Image: NASA / JPL-Caltech / SSI
Cassini took the spectacular Saturn storm photos Tuesday and relayed it back to Earth the same day, mission scientists said in a statement. The pictures reveal a swirling storm reminiscent of the recent Hurricane Sandy that recently plagued our own planet.
Saturn’s mysterious northern vortex, a vast hexagon-shaped storm, dominates this photo taken Tuesday by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.
The tempest is located in a strange hexagonal cloud vortex at Saturn’s north pole that was first discovered by the Voyager spacecraft in the early 1980s, and sighted more closely by Cassini since then. The strange six-sided feature is thought to be formed by the path of a jet stream flowing through the planet’s atmosphere.
“Cassini’s recent excursion into inclined orbits has given mission scientists a vertigo-inducing view of Saturn ‘s polar regions, and what to our wondering eyes has just appeared: roiling storm clouds and a swirling vortex at the center of Saturn’s famed northern polar hexagon,” Cassini scientists wrote in an online update.
Source: Stunning NASA photos capture massive swirling Saturn vortex
Saturn Moon Titan’s Atmosphere Shows Surprising Rise
Saturn’s cloudy moon Titan has a middle atmosphere containing organic compounds that could hold the potential for life. Now, a new look at that atmospheric layer by a NASA spacecraft shows that it may be on the move, scientists say.
Image: This night-side photo of Titan taken by the Cassini spacecraft shows a buildup of haze over the Saturn moon’s south pole (bottom). New results from Cassini’s infrared spectrometer show that air is now sinking at the south pole, leading to increased temperatures at high altitude and a large enrichment in trace gases. Image released Nov. 28, 2012. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
New measurements from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn show that the seasonal movement of the trace atmospheric gases on Titan rises to higher altitudes than expected, researchers said.
Because of Titan’s seasonal orientation, the winter poles always point away from Earth, hiding on the moon’s dark side. Studying the complex trace gases in the visible summer hemisphere doesn’t solve the problem; water vapor in Earth’s atmosphere obscures the measurements of the trace gases.
The rich dynamics of Saturn’s F ring are on display in this image taken by the Cassini spacecraft. Most of the features seen here are believed to be due to the ring’s interactions with its shepherd moons or with small moonlets embedded within the ring itself.
In this image, a bright clump of material is also caught just outside the main part of the ring (on the right side of the image below the middle). The brightness of the clump in this observation geometry suggests it’s made of dusty material. At the left edge of the image, the A ring is also visible.
This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 19 degrees below the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 28, 2012.
Today is the birthday of William Herschel (15 November 1738 – 25 August 1822) a German born British astronomer known today as the discoverer of the planet Uranus in March of 1781. He also discovered two of Uranus’s moons, Titania and Oberon and two moons of Saturn. He is also credited with the discovery of Infrared radiation, and to honor that the image above of Uranus is a 1998 false-colour near-infrared image of the planet showing cloud bands, rings, and moons obtained by the Hubble Space Telescope’s NICMOS camera.
Herschel named his discovery George, oddly enough, to commemorate his new patron, King George III. At the time he said this:
In the fabulous ages of ancient times the appellations of Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn were given to the Planets, as being the names of their principal heroes and divinities. In the present more philosophical era it would hardly be allowable to have recourse to the same method and call it Juno, Pallas, Apollo or Minerva, for a name to our new heavenly body. The first consideration of any particular event, or remarkable incident, seems to be its chronology: if in any future age it should be asked, when this last-found Planet was discovered? It would be a very satisfactory answer to say, ‘In the reign of King George the Third’.
Few astronomers outside of England liked the name, however, and astronomers began proposing alternatives almost immediately. German astronomer Johann Elert Bode called it Uranus (Ancient Greek: Οὐρανός) after the Ancient Greek god of the sky, the logic being that as Saturn was the father of Jupiter, the new planet should be the father of Saturn. It wasn’t until the middle of the next century that atlases dropped Herschel’s name and adopted Uranus.
All images in the public domain.
The Rings and Moons of Saturn
expose-the-light
Titan’s swirling south-polar vortex stands out brightly against the other clouds of the south pole (seen at the lower right of the image). The Cassini spacecraft is monitoring the development of the south polar vortex to help understand seasonal changes on Saturn’s largest moon.
For a color image of the south polar vortex on Titan, see Titan’s Colorful South Polar Vortex. For a movie of the vortex, see Titan’s South Polar Vortex in Motion.
Enceladus vents water into space from its south polar region. The moon is lit by the Sun on the left, and backlit by the vast reflecting surface of its parent planet to the right. Icy crystals from these plumes are likely the source of Saturn’s nebulous E ring, within which Enceladus orbits. Mosaic composite photograph. Taken by Cassini, December 25, 2009.
Saturn’s Moon Dione in Slight Color
Image Credit: NASA, JPL, SSI, ESA; Post Processing: Marc Canale
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Most Powerful Storms of the Solar System
