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Flickering Aldebaran #1
| Description |
Flickering Aldebaran #1 |
| Full Description |
The Cassini spacecraft took a series of images on Sept. 9, 2006 as it watched the bright red giant star Aldebaran slip behind Saturn's rings. This type of observation is known as a stellar occultation and uses a star whose brightness is well known. As Cassini watches the rings pass in front of the star, the star's light fluctuates, providing information about the concentrations of ring particles within the various radial features in the rings. This view shows the Encke Gap (325 kilometers, or 200 miles wide) and the faint ringlets which share the gap with the embedded moon Pan. The view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 19 degrees below the ringplane. Bright Aldebaran is overexposed, creating thin vertical lines on its image. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 9, 2006 at a distance of approximately 359,000 kilometers (233,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale on the sky at the distance of Saturn is 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel. 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, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org . Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
| Date |
October 9, 2006 |
|
Flickering Aldebaran #3
| Description |
Flickering Aldebaran #3 |
| Full Description |
Cassini took a series of images on Sept. 9, 2006 as it watched the bright red giant star Aldebaran slip behind Saturn's rings. This type of observation is known as a stellar occultation and uses a star whose brightness is well known. As Cassini watches the rings pass in front, the star's light fluctuates, providing information about the concentrations of ring particles within the various radial features in the rings. Here, Cassini watches the star through the part of the rings masked by Saturn's shadow. The view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 20 degrees below the ringplane. Bright Aldebaran is over exposed, creating thin vertical lines on its image. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 9, 2006 at a distance of approximately 351,000 kilometers (218,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale on the sky at the distance of Saturn is 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel. 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, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org . Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
| Date |
October 13, 2006 |
|
Flickering Aldebaran #2
| Description |
Flickering Aldebaran #2 |
| Full Description |
Cassini took a series of images on Sept. 9, 2006 as it watched the bright red giant star Aldebaran slip behind Saturn's rings. This type of observation is known as a stellar occultation and uses a star whose brightness is well known. As Cassini watches the rings pass in front, the star's light fluctuates, providing information about the concentrations of ring particles within the various radial features in the rings. This view looks toward the sunlit side of the outer A ring (just interior to the Encke Gap) from about 19 degrees below the ringplane. Bright Aldebaran is over exposed, creating thin vertical lines on its image. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 9, 2006 at a distance of approximately 358,000 kilometers (223,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale on the sky at the distance of Saturn is 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel. 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, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org . Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
| Date |
October 11, 2006 |
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Long Leonid
| Title |
Long Leonid |
| Explanation |
Just last week this long lovely Leonid shower [ http://spacescience.com/headlines/y2000/ ast21nov_1.htm ] meteor arced through the night. Captured on [ http://www.comet-track.com/meteor/leonids00/ leonids00.html ] November 17/18 by photographer [ http://www.comet-track.com ] Bob Yen, the meteor trail spans about 70 times the apparent diameter of the full moon in the skies above Mt. Wilson, California, USA. The Leonid's path flashes from the outskirts of constellation Gemini [ http://www.seds.org/Maps/Stars_en/Fig/ gemini.html ] to the triangle-shaped head of Taurus [ http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/ taurus-p.html ] (lower right). Of course, the trail points back toward Leo, the shower's [ http://comets.amsmeteors.org/meteors/showers/ leonids.html ] eponymous radiant, while passing near such night sky notables as galactic star cluster M35 [ http://www.seds.org/messier/m/m035.html ] (upper left) and Taurus's brightest star, red giant Aldebaran [ http://www.astro.uiuc.edu/~kaler/sow/ aldebaran.html ]. Though the sky was ruled by a bright but waning Moon and brilliant Jupiter, the Leonid meteor shower [ http://www.spaceweather.com/meteors/gallery_18nov00.html ] still awed observers at dark sky locations with peak rates of hundreds of meteors per hour. |
|
Moon Over California
| Title |
Moon Over California |
| Explanation |
The Moon, Saturn, and Venus shine above while city lights twinkle below in the deepening twilight of [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990325.html ] March 19. Taken from outside Indio, California, the photo shows [ http://members.home.com/rmscott/orman_index.html ] the city lights of Indio and nearby Palm Springs. The brilliant lunar crescent [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990129.html ] is over exposed here with Saturn about 4 degrees away to the upper right and bright Venus still farther to the right only another 2 degrees or so. This Sunday evening, April 18, another dramatic lunar spectacle should be easily visible to stargazers [ http://eclipse.span.ch/18apr99.htm ] in the western and midwestern US when the crescent moon passes in front of the bright star Aldebaran [ http://www.skypub.com/sights/skyevents/9904skyevents.html ]. |
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Flickering Aldebaran #3
PIA08287
Saturn
Imaging Science Subsystem -
…
| Title |
Flickering Aldebaran #3 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Cassini took a series of images on Sept. 9, 2006 as it watched the bright red giant star Aldebaran slip behind Saturn's rings. This type of observation is known as a stellar occultation and uses a star whose brightness is well known. As Cassini watches the rings pass in front, the star's light fluctuates, providing information about the concentrations of ring particles within the various radial features in the rings. Here, Cassini watches the star through the part of the rings masked by Saturn's shadow. The view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 20 degrees below the ringplane. Bright Aldebaran is over exposed, creating thin vertical lines on its image. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 9, 2006 at a distance of approximately 351,000 kilometers (218,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale on the sky at the distance of Saturn is 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel. 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, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm [ http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov ]. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org [ http://ciclops.org ]. |
|
Flickering Aldebaran #1
PIA08283
Saturn
Imaging Science Subsystem -
…
| Title |
Flickering Aldebaran #1 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
The Cassini spacecraft took a series of images on Sept. 9, 2006 as it watched the bright red giant star Aldebaran slip behind Saturn's rings. This type of observation is known as a stellar occultation and uses a star whose brightness is well known. As Cassini watches the rings pass in front of the star, the star's light fluctuates, providing information about the concentrations of ring particles within the various radial features in the rings. This view shows the Encke Gap (325 kilometers, or 200 miles wide) and the faint ringlets which share the gap with the embedded moon Pan. The view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 19 degrees below the ringplane. Bright Aldebaran is overexposed, creating thin vertical lines on its image. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 9, 2006 at a distance of approximately 359,000 kilometers (233,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale on the sky at the distance of Saturn is 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel. 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, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm [ http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov ]. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org [ http://ciclops.org ]. |
|
Flickering Aldebaran #2
PIA08285
Saturn
Imaging Science Subsystem -
…
| Title |
Flickering Aldebaran #2 |
| Original Caption Released with Image |
Cassini took a series of images on Sept. 9, 2006 as it watched the bright red giant star Aldebaran slip behind Saturn's rings. This type of observation is known as a stellar occultation and uses a star whose brightness is well known. As Cassini watches the rings pass in front, the star's light fluctuates, providing information about the concentrations of ring particles within the various radial features in the rings. This view looks toward the sunlit side of the outer A ring (just interior to the Encke Gap) from about 19 degrees below the ringplane. Bright Aldebaran is over exposed, creating thin vertical lines on its image. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 9, 2006 at a distance of approximately 358,000 kilometers (223,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale on the sky at the distance of Saturn is 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel. 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, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm [ http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov ]. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org [ http://ciclops.org ]. |
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