|
|
The Veils of Titan
| Description |
Here on the Gallery page you can find the very latest images, videos and products from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, including the spectacular launch, spacecraft assembly and the exciting trip to Saturn. |
| Full Description |
The veils of Saturn's most mysterious moon have begun to lift in Cassini's eagerly awaited first glimpse of the surface of Titan, a world where scientists believe organic matter rains from hazy skies and seas of liquid hydrocarbons dot a frigid surface. Surface features previously observed only from Earth-based telescopes are now visible in images of Titan taken in mid-April by Cassini through one of the narrow angle camera's spectral filters specifically designed to penetrate the thick atmosphere. The image scale is 230 kilometers (143 miles) per pixel, and it rivals the best Earth-based images. The two images displayed here show Titan from a vantage point 17 degrees below its equator, yielding a view from 50 degrees north latitude all the way to its south pole. The image on the left was taken four days after the image on the right. Titan rotated 90 degrees in that time. The two images combined cover a region extending halfway around the moon. The observed brightness variations suggest a diverse surface, with variations in average reflectivity on scales of a couple hundred kilometers. The images were taken through a narrow filter centered at 938 nanometers, a spectral region in which the only obstacle to light is the carbon-based, organic haze. Despite the rather long 38-second exposure times, there is no noticeable smear due to spacecraft motion. The images have been magnified 10 times and enhanced in contrast to bring out details. No further processing to remove the effects of the overlying atmosphere has been performed. The superimposed grid over the images illustrates the orientation of Titan -- north is up and rotated 25 degrees to the left -- as well as the geographical regions of the satellite that are illuminated and visible. The yellow curve marks the position of the boundary between day and night on Titan. The enhanced image contrast makes the region within 20 degrees of this day and night division darker than usual. The Sun illuminates Titan from the right at a phase angle of 66 degrees. Because the Sun is in the southern hemisphere as seen from Titan, the north pole is canted relative to the boundary between day and night by 25 degrees. Also shown here is a map of relative surface brightness variations on Titan as measured in images taken in the 1080-nanometer spectral region in 1997 and 1998 by the Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer on NASA¿s Hubble Space Telescope. These images have scales of 300 kilometers (186 miles) per pixel. The map colors indicate different surface reflectivities. From darkest to brightest, the color progression is: deep blue (darkest), light blue, green, yellow, red and deep red (brightest). The large, continent-sized, red feature extending from 60 degrees to 150 degrees west longitude is called Xanadu. It is unclear whether Xanadu is a mountain range, giant basin, smooth plain, or a combination of all three. It may be dotted with hydrocarbon lakes but that is also unknown. All that, is presently known is that in Earth-based images, it is the brightest region on Titan. A comparison between the Cassini images and the Hubble map indicates that Xanadu is visible as a bright region in the Cassini image on the right. The dark blue northwest-southeast trending feature from 210 degrees to 250 degrees west longitude, and the bright yellow/green region to the east (right) and southeast of it at minus 50 degrees latitude and 180 to 230 degrees west longitude on the Hubble map, can both be seen in the image on the left. It is noteworthy that the surface is visible to Cassini from its present approach viewing geometry, which is not the most favourable for surface viewing. These early Cassini observations are promising for upcoming imaging sequences of Titan in which the resolution improves by a factor of five over the next two months. These results are encouraging for future, in-orbit observations of Titan that will be acquired from lower, more favorable phase angles. The first opportunity to view small-scale features (2 kilometers or 1.2 miles) on the surface comes during a 350,000 kilometer (217,500 mile) flyby over Titan's south pole on July 2, 2004, only 30 hours after Cassini's insertion into orbit around the ringed planet. 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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras, were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org . Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
|
Revealing Titan's Surface
| Description |
Here on the Gallery page you can find the very latest images, videos and products from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, including the spectacular launch, spacecraft assembly and the exciting trip to Saturn. |
| Full Description |
These three pictures were created from a sequence of images acquired by Cassini's imaging science subsystem on Oct. 25, 2004, 38 hours before its closest approach to Titan. They illustrate how the details of Titan's surface can be revealed through image processing techniques. The picture on the left is a single image that has undergone only basic cleaning of corrupted pixels and imperfections in the camera's charge coupled device, a light-sensitive detector similar to those found in digital cameras. In the middle frame, multiple images were used to enhance the contrast detected from Titan's surface and to reduce the blurring effect of atmospheric haze. The picture on the right has been further processed to sharpen the edges of features. The processed images reveal sharp boundaries between dark and light regions on the surface, there are no shadows produced by topography in these images. The bright area on the center right is Xanadu, a region that has been observed previously from Earth and by Cassini. To the west of Xanadu lies an area of dark material that completely surrounds brighter features in some places. Narrow linear features, both dark and bright, can also be seen. It is not clear what geologic processes created these features, although it seems clear that the surface is being shaped by more than impact craters alone. The very bright features near Titan's south pole are clouds similar to those observed during the distant Cassini flyby on July 2, 2004. The region on the left side of these images will be targeted by higher-resolution observations as Cassini passes close to Titan on Oct. 26, 2004. All of these images were acquired by Cassini on Oct. 25, 2004, at an altitude of 702,000 kilometers (436,000 miles) and a pixel scale of 4.2 kilometers (2.6 miles). The Sun was illuminating Titan from nearly behind the spacecraft. 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 Cassini-Huygens 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 team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org . Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
|
Huygens Probe Shines for Cas
…
| Description |
Huygens Probe Shines for Cassini's Cameras (Labeled) |
| Full Description |
The European Space Agency's Huygens probe appears shining as it coasts away from Cassini in this image taken on Dec. 26, 2004, just two days after it successfully detached from the Cassini spacecraft. Shown in white boxes are known stars. The probe is the brightest item on the lower right. The other dots are artifacts of the camera. Although only a few pixels across, this image is helping navigators reconstruct the probe's trajectory and pinpoint its position relative to Cassini. This information so far shows that the probe and Cassini are right on the mark and well within the predicted trajectory accuracy. This information is important to help establish the required geometry between the probe and the orbiter for radio communications during the probe descent on January 14. The Huygens probe, built and managed by ESA, will remain dormant until the onboard timer wakes it up just before the probe reaches Titan's upper atmosphere on Jan. 14, 2005. Then it will begin a dramatic plunge through Titan's murky atmosphere, tasting its chemical makeup and composition as it descends to touch down on its surface. The data gathered during this 2-1/2 hour descent will be transmitted from the probe to the Cassini orbiter. Afterward, Cassini will point its antenna to Earth and relay the data through NASA's Deep Space Network to JPL and on to the European Space Agency's Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, which serves as the operations center for the Huygens probe mission. From this control center, ESA engineers will be tracking the probe and scientists will be standing by to process the data from the probe's six instruments. This image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera at a distance of 52 kilometers (32 miles) from the probe on Dec. 26, 2004. The image has been magnified and contrast enhanced to aid visibility. 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. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini . *Credit*: NASA/JPL |
| Date |
December 27, 2004 |
|
Nope, Not Jupiter!
| Description |
Nope, Not Jupiter! |
| Full Description |
Saturn, more bland in appearance than Jupiter to the naked eye, puts on a dramatic display in this contrast-enhanced image taken with the Cassini spacecraft. This view shows a giant oval in the ringed planet's southern hemisphere that is somewhat smaller than, but resembles in appearance, Jupiter's long-lived Great Red Spot. On Jupiter such southern-hemisphere features usually exhibit counterclockwise - or anti-cyclonic - rotation, like high pressure systems on Earth. Imaging scientists will be interested to watch the evolution of this and similar storms, to see if it is longer-lived than is typical for Saturnian storms. Also seen in the image at higher southern latitudes are the common dark belts and bright zones, usually associated with alternating eastward and westward jets. These jets often produce boundary turbulence (like that seen toward the bottom right) due to wind shear and density differences between adjacent bands. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on Dec. 6, 2004, at a distance of approximately 3.3 million kilometers (2.1 million miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 58 degrees. The filter used is centered at 727 nanometers - an area of the electromagnetic spectrum where methane gas is strongly absorbing. The image scale is 38 kilometers (24 miles) per pixel. This image has been slightly contrast-enhanced to aid visibility. 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 team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org. *Credit*: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
| Date |
December 24, 2004 |
|
Close-Up of Huygens Probe
| Description |
Close-Up of Huygens Probe |
| Full Description |
The European Space Agency's Huygens Probe appears shining as it coasts away from Cassini in this close-up of an image taken on Dec. 26, 2004, just two days after it successfully detached from the Cassini spacecraft. Shown here side-by-side is a close-up of the Huygens probe. The image on the left shows the relative size of the probe. The bright spots in both images are probably due to light reflecting off the blanketing material that covers the probe. Although only a few pixels across, this image is helping navigators reconstruct the probe's trajectory and pinpoint its position relative to Cassini. This information so far shows that the probe and Cassini are right on the mark and well within the predicted trajectory accuracy. This information is important to help establish the required geometry between the probe and the orbiter for radio communications during the probe descent on January 14. The Huygens probe, built and managed by ESA, will remain dormant until the onboard timer wakes it up just before the probe reaches Titan's upper atmosphere on Jan. 14, 2005. Then it will begin a dramatic plunge through Titan's murky atmosphere, tasting its chemical makeup and composition as it descends to touch down on its surface. The data gathered during this 2-1/2 hour descent will be transmitted from the probe to the Cassini orbiter. Afterward, Cassini will point its antenna to Earth and relay the data through NASA's Deep Space Network to JPL and on to the European Space Agency's Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, which serves as the operations center for the Huygens probe mission. From this control center, ESA engineers will be tracking the probe and scientists will be standing by to process the data from the probe's six instruments. This image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera at a distance of 52 kilometers (32 miles) from the probe on Dec. 26, 2004. The image has been magnified and contrast enhanced to aid visibility. 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. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini . *Credit*: NASA/JPL |
| Date |
December 27, 2004 |
|
Huygens Probe Release Zoom
| Description |
Huygens Probe Release Zoom |
| Full Description |
A closer view of the Cassini image of the Huygens Probe after its successful release. The full image is available here. Cassini snapped this image of the probe about 12 hours after its release from the orbiter. The probe successfully detached from Cassini on Dec. 24, 2004, and is on course for its January 14 encounter with Titan. The Huygens probe will remain dormant until the onboard timer wakes it up just before the probe reaches Titan's upper atmosphere on Jan. 14, 2005. Then it will begin a dramatic plunge through Titan's murky atmosphere, tasting its chemical makeup and composition as it descends to touch down on its surface. The data gathered during this 2-1/2 hour descent will be transmitted from the probe to the Cassini orbiter. Afterward, Cassini will point its antenna to Earth and relay the data through NASA's Deep Space Network to JPL and on to the European Space Agency's Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, which serves as the operations center for the Huygens probe mission. From this control center, ESA engineers will be tracking the probe and scientists will be standing by to process the data from the probe's six instruments. This image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera at a distance of 18 kilometers (11 miles) from the probe on Dec. 25, 2004. The image has been magnified and contrast enhanced to aid visibility. 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. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini . *Credit*: NASA/JPL |
| Date |
December 25, 2004 |
|
Cassini's Holiday Greetings
| Description |
Saturn and Titan |
| Full Description |
From its station nearly 1.2 billion kilometers (746 million miles) from Earth, the stalwart Cassini spacecraft sends holiday greetings to Earth with this lovely color portrait of Saturn and two of its moons. The 2004 holiday season marks the close of a miraculous year that saw the end of Cassini's long journey across the solar system and the beginning of its adventures in orbit around Saturn. In a triumph of human achievement, the Cassini mission has already returned thousands of images and has begun to uncover the mysteries of the Saturn system. This color portrait serves as reminder of the Saturnian places we have already seen and the promise of future discovery at Titan when the European Space Agency's Huygens probe arrives at Titan on Jan. 14, 2005. The image shows the majestic ringed planet, with bands of colorful clouds in its southern hemisphere. The planet¿s northern extremes have a cool bluish hue, due to scattering of blue wavelengths of sunlight by the cloud-free upper atmosphere there. Long shadows of the icy rings stretch across the north. A grayish, oval-shaped storm is visible in Saturn's southern hemisphere and is easily 475 kilometers (295 miles) across -- the size of some hurricanes on Earth. Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) is visible near lower right with its thick, orange-colored atmosphere, and faint Mimas (398 kilometers, or 247 miles across) appears just right of the rings' outer edge. Images taken in the red, green and blue filters with the Cassini spacecraft wide angle camera on Dec. 14, 2004, were combined to create this color view at a distance of approximately 719,000 kilometers (447,000 miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 43 kilometers (27 miles) 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 team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org. *Credit:* NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
| Date |
December 24, 2004 |
|
Bands of Clouds and Lace
| Description |
Here on the Gallery page you can find the very latest images, videos and products from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, including the spectacular launch, spacecraft assembly and the exciting trip to Saturn. |
| Full Description |
As Cassini nears its rendezvous with Saturn, new detail in the banded clouds of the planet's atmosphere are becoming visible. Cassini began the journey to the ringed world of Saturn nearly seven years ago and is now less than two months away from orbit insertion on June 30. Cassini¿s narrow-angle camera took this image on April 16, 2004, when the spacecraft was 38.5 million kilometers (23.9 million miles) from Saturn. Dark regions are generally areas free of high clouds, and bright areas are places with high, thick clouds which shield the view of the darker areas below. A dark spot is visible at the south pole, which is remarkable to scientists because it is so small and centered. The spot could be affected by Saturn's magnetic field, which is nearly aligned with the planet's rotation axis, unlike the magnetic fields of Jupiter and Earth. From south to north, other notable features are the two white spots just above the dark spot toward the right, and the large dark oblong-shaped feature that extends across the middle. The darker band beneath the oblong-shaped feature has begun to show a lacy pattern of lighter-colored, high altitude clouds, indicative of turbulent atmospheric conditions. The cloud bands move at different speeds, and their irregularities may be due to either the different motions between them or to disturbances below the visible cloud layer. Such disturbances might be powered by the planet's internal heat, Saturn radiates more energy than it receives from the Sun. The moon Mimas (396 kilometers, 245 miles across) is visible to the left of the south pole. Saturn currently has 31 known moons. Since launch, 13 new moons have been discovered by ground-based telescopes. Cassini will get a closer look and may discover new moons, perhaps embedded within the planet¿s magnificent rings. This image was taken using a filter sensitive to light near 727 nanometers, one of the near-infrared absorption bands of methane gas, which is one of the ingredients in Saturn's atmosphere. The image scale is approximately 231 kilometers (144 miles) per pixel. Contrast has been enhanced to aid visibility of features in the atmosphere. 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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org . Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
|
| Description |
Here on the Gallery page you can find the very latest images, videos and products from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, including the spectacular launch, spacecraft assembly and the exciting trip to Saturn. |
| Full Description |
Saturn appears serene and majestic in the first color composite made of images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on its approach to the ringed planet, with arrival still 20 months away. The planet was 285 million kilometers (177 million miles) away from the spacecraft, nearly twice the distance between the Sun and Earth, when Cassini took images of it in various filters as an engineering test on Oct. 21, 2002. It is summer in Saturn's southern hemisphere. The Sun is a lofty 27 degrees below the equator and casts a semi-circular shadow of the planet on the rings. The shadow extends partway across the rings, leaving the outer A ring in sunlight. The last Saturn-bound spacecraft, Voyager 2, arrived in early northern spring. Many features seen in Voyager images -- spoke-like markings on the rings, clouds and eddies in the hazy atmosphere, ring-shepherding moons -- are not yet visible to Cassini. Titan, Saturn's largest moon, appears in the upper left. It is the only moon resolved from this distance. This composite uses a threefold enhancement in the brightness of Titan relative to the brightness of Saturn. Titan is a major attraction for scientists of the Cassini-Huygens mission. They will study its haze-enshrouded atmosphere and peer down, with special instrumentation, to its surface to look for evidence of organic processes similar to those that might have occurred on the early Earth, prior to the emergence of life. Cassini will enter orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004. It will release a piggybacked probe, Huygens, which will descend through Titan's atmosphere on Jan. 14, 2005. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. Information about the mission is available online at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. *Image Note: * * Credit: NASA/JPL/Southwest Research Institute For higher resolution, click here. |
|
Behold Saturn's Magnetospher
…
| Description |
Here on the Gallery page you can find the very latest images, videos and products from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, including the spectacular launch, spacecraft assembly and the exciting trip to Saturn. |
| Full Description |
Saturn's magnetosphere is seen for the first time in this image taken by the Cassini spacecraft on June 21, 2004. A magnetosphere is a magnetic envelope of charged particles that surrounds some planets, including Earth. It is invisible to the human eye, but Cassini's Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument was able to detect the hydrogen atoms (represented in red) that escape it. The emission from these hydrogen atoms comes primarily from regions far from Saturn, well outside the planet's rings, and perhaps beyond the orbit of the largest moon Titan. The image represents the first direct look at the shape of Saturn's magnetosphere. Previously, NASA's Voyager mission had inferred what Saturn's magnetosphere would look like in the same way that a blind person might feel the shape of an elephant. With Cassini, the "elephant" has been revealed in a picture. This picture was taken by the ion and neutral camera, one of three sensors that comprise the magnetosphereic imaging instrument, from a distance of about 3.7 million miles (about 6 million kilometers) from Saturn. The magnetospheric imaging instrument will continue to study Saturn's magnetosphere throughout the mission's four-year lifetime. 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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The magnetospheric imaging instrument team is based at the Johns Hopkins University, Laurel, Md. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument home page, http://sd-www.jhuapl.edu/CASSINI/ . Image Credit: NASA/JPL/John Hopkins University |
|
Lightning, crackles and pops
| Description |
Here on the Gallery page you can find the very latest images, videos and products from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, including the spectacular launch, spacecraft assembly and the exciting trip to Saturn. |
| Full Description |
The speckles in this graph are radio signals from lightning in Saturn's atmosphere detected by Cassini. Just as one can hear lightning on an AM radio as crackles and pops, Cassini's radio and plasma wave science instrument detects Saturn lightning as bursty signals over a broad frequency range. This presentation shows the intensity of radio emissions in color as well as their frequency (vertical axis) and time (horizontal axis) on July 13, 2004. Black represents no detectable signal. The lightning emissions appear as short bursts scattered over frequencies from a few megahertz to 16 megahertz. During this time Cassini was 4.9 million kilometers (3.1 million miles) from Saturn. Saturn lightning, like Earth lightning, emits radio emissions over a very broad frequency range. The bursts seen here appear at relatively narrow frequencies. This is because it takes Cassini several seconds to sweep the entire frequency range, but the radio bursts last just a small fraction of a second. So, Cassini detects the bursts at whatever frequency it happens to be at in its sweep when a burst occurs. During the 18-hour interval represented in this display, Cassini detected two general intervals of lightning signals separated by 10 or 11 hours. During this time, Saturn rotated around its axis once - one Saturn day. So, these signals appear to be coming from the same storm system in the atmosphere which lasted for at least a Saturn day. However, the appearance of the radio emissions is quite different after one day, indicating the storm system is evolving on this time scale. 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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The radio and plasma wave science team is based at the University of Iowa, Iowa City. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the instrument team's home page, http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/plasma-wave/cassini/home.html . Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Iowa |
|
Colorful Threads and Shadows
| Description |
Here on the Gallery page you can find the very latest images, videos and products from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, including the spectacular launch, spacecraft assembly and the exciting trip to Saturn. |
| Full Description |
Saturn's faintly banded atmosphere is delicately colored and its threadbare rings cross their own shadows in this marvelous natural color view from Cassini. The planet and its rings would nearly fill the space between Earth and the Moon. Yet, despite their great breadth, the rings are a few meters thick and in some places, very translucent. In this image, we can see through the C ring, which is closest to Saturn, and through the Cassini division, the 4,800-kilometer- (2,980-mile-) wide gap that arcs across the top of the image and separates the optically thick B ring from the A ring. The part of the atmosphere seen through the gap appears darker and more bluish due to scattering at blue wavelengths by the cloud-free upper atmosphere. The different colors in Saturn's atmosphere are due to particles whose composition is yet to be determined. The image was obtained with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on July 30, 2004, at a distance of 7.6 million kilometers (4.7 million miles) from Saturn. Images taken with red, green and blue filters were combined to create this color view. The image scale is 46 kilometers (28 miles) 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 Cassini-Huygens 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 team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org . Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
|
The Dragon Storm
| Description |
The Dragon Storm |
| Full Description |
A large, bright and complex convective storm that appeared in Saturn's southern hemisphere in mid-September 2004 was the key in solving a long-standing mystery about the ringed planet. Saturn's atmosphere and its rings are shown here in a false color composite made from Cassini images taken in near infrared light through filters that sense different amounts of methane gas. Portions of the atmosphere with a large abundance of methane above the clouds are red, indicating clouds that are deep in the atmosphere. Grey indicates high clouds, and brown indicates clouds at intermediate altitudes. The rings are bright blue because there is no methane gas between the ring particles and the camera. The complex feature with arms and secondary extensions just above and to the right of center is called the Dragon Storm. It lies in a region of the southern hemisphere referred to as "storm alley" by imaging scientists because of the high level of storm activity observed there by Cassini in the last year. The Dragon Storm was a powerful source of radio emissions during July and September of 2004. The radio waves from the storm resemble the short bursts of static generated by lightning on Earth. Cassini detected the bursts only when the storm was rising over the horizon on the night side of the planet as seen from the spacecraft, the bursts stopped when the storm moved into sunlight. This on/off pattern repeated for many Saturn rotations over a period of several weeks, and it was the clock-like repeatability that indicated the storm and the radio bursts are related. Scientists have concluded that the Dragon Storm is a giant thunderstorm whose precipitation generates electricity as it does on Earth. The storm may be deriving its energy from Saturn's deep atmosphere. One mystery is why the radio bursts start while the Dragon Storm is below the horizon on the night side and end when the storm is on the day side, still in full view of the Cassini spacecraft. A possible explanation is that the lightning source lies to the east of the visible cloud, perhaps because it is deeper where the currents are eastward relative to those at cloud top levels. If this were the case, the lightning source would come up over the night side horizon and would sink down below the day side horizon before the visible cloud. This would explain the timing of the visible storm relative to the radio bursts. The Dragon Storm is of great interest for another reason. In examining images taken of Saturn's atmosphere over many months, imaging scientists found that the Dragon Storm arose in the same part of Saturn's atmosphere that had earlier produced large bright convective storms. In other words, the Dragon Storm appears to be a long-lived storm deep in the atmosphere that periodically flares up to produce dramatic bright white plumes which subside over time. One earlier sighting, in July 2004, was also associated with strong radio bursts. And another, observed in March 2004 and captured, in a movie created from images of the atmosphere (http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06082 and http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA06083) spawned three little dark oval storms that broke off from the arms of the main storm. Two of these subsequently merged with each other, the current to the north carried the third one off to the west, and Cassini lost track of it. Small dark storms like these generally get stretched out until they merge with the opposing currents to the north and south. These little storms are the food that sustains the larger atmospheric features, including the larger ovals and the eastward and westward currents. If the little storms come from the giant thunderstorms, then together they form a food chain that harvests the energy of the deep atmosphere and helps maintain the powerful currents. Cassini has many more chances to observe future flare-ups of the Dragon Storm, and others like it over the course of the mission. It is likely that scientists will come to solve the mystery of the radio bursts and observe storm creation and merging in the next 2 or 3 years. 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 team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . For images visit the Cassini imaging team home page http://ciclops.org . *Credit:* NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
| Date |
February 24, 2005 |
|
Scrutinizing Titan's Surface
| Description |
Scrutinizing Titan's Surface |
| Full Description |
The six close-up views of Titan's surface shown here are composed of images acquired by the Cassini spacecraft during flybys in October (see Titan Mosaic: October 2004) and December (see Titan Mosaic: December 2004) of 2004. These close-up views illustrate that a variety of processes have shaped the surface of Titan, just as diverse geologic processes are responsible for what we see on Earth's surface. Image (a) shows a prominent bright-dark boundary near the western edge of the Xanadu region which exhibits a sharp, angular edge between the materials. Three bright, discontinuous circles can be seen (two near the top of the image and another near the lower left). These may be large impact craters, the upper two are approximately 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) in diameter and the lower one is approximately 50 kilometers (20 miles) in diameter. Titan's thick atmosphere will screen out small projectiles, but if the surface were as old as Titan itself, it should have many more craters of these sizes. Therefore, Cassini scientists think that, like Earth's surface, Titan's surface has been modified more recently by other geologic processes. However, such processes on Titan may take much longer than on Earth, acting over hundreds of millions of years. Image (b) shows bright features that appear to be streamlined as if were they formed by winds in Titan's atmosphere moving from west to east. The landing site of the Huygens probe is in the upper left corner of this image (see Cassini's View of Titan Landing Site). Image (c) shows a bright feature surrounded by dark material. Several long, dark and narrow lines running through the bright area may be larger examples of the dark channels seen by the Huygens probe (see Mosaic of River Channel and Ridge Area on Titan). These lines are on the order of 2 kilometers (1 mile) wide, and tens of kilometers long. Image (d) shows dark material within the bright area to the west of Xanadu. The linear nature of these features suggests that they may have formed by faulting. They may be dark due to modification by other surface processes occurring on Titan, in the same way that on Earth, fault-lines can be enhanced by erosion and/or deposition of material by water and wind. Image (e) shows brightness variations in the region southeast of the Huygens landing site. The features indicated by arrows exhibit shapes that are similar to drainage patterns seen on Earth and Mars, where the source of the liquid is underground springs rather than rainfall. Image (f) shows a region near the northwestern edge of Xanadu where the boundary between the bright and dark materials is quite complicated. Here some of the bright patches appear as if they represent thin surface plates that have been broken apart and spread apart over underlying dark material. The white bars above each image are 200 kilometers (124 miles) long. Imaging Titan through its thick atmosphere is a challenge, and the narrow, straight lines within the images, are seams between individual images that have not been completely removed. North is to the top of each frame. 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 team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org . *Credit:* NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute. |
| Date |
March 9, 2005 |
|
Titan's Variety (with Grid)
| Description |
Titan's Variety |
| Full Description |
Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org . *Credit:* NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute, This map of Titan's surface brightness was assembled from images taken by the Cassini spacecraft over the past year, both as it approached the Saturn system and during three closer flybys in July, October and December 2004. Due to Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere, the size of surface features that can be resolved is a few to five times larger than the actual pixel scale. The pixel scales of the individual images in the map range from 88 to 2 kilometers (55 miles to 1 mile), so the scales of the surface features that can be resolved range from 180 to 10 kilometers (112 to 6 miles). The images were acquired using a near-infrared filter (centered at 938 nanometers) that has been proven effective at peering through Titan's haze to its troposphere and surface. Similar to a cloudy day on Earth, these images indicate only brightness variations, there are no shadows or topographic shading effects. The map reveals complex patterns of bright and dark material on Titan's surface. The large scale features, including Xanadu Regio -- the large, bright feature that extends from approximately 80 degrees to 130 degrees west near the equator -- have been observed from Earth over the past several years. The patterns seem to vary with latitude. Close to the equator there is more contrast in the large-scale bright and dark features, with some strikingly linear boundaries that are suggestive of geologic processes at work within Titan's crust. The southern-middle latitudes are more uniformly bright, whereas there is more dark material near the south pole. The very bright features near the south pole are clouds. High northern latitudes are not illuminated during the current season on Titan, which is southern summer. Cassini-Huygens scientists are investigating what causes the latitudinal variation in brightness. One possibility is that, similar to Earth, some parts of the surface receive higher amounts of precipitation than others over Titan's long year (29.5 Earth years), resulting in different amounts of erosion across the surface. The Huygens probe landed at approximately 10 degrees south, 190 degrees west, near a boundary between dark and bright material. By combining Huygens' very high-resolution observations (see Titan Descent) with Cassini's regional and global-scale, lower-resolution images of Titan, as well as Cassini radar and the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer observations (see Cat Scratches and Titan's Complex Surface, respectively), Cassini-Huygens scientists are working to unravel the complex history of Titan's surface. 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 team is based at the |
| Date |
March 9, 2005 |
|
Titan's Variety
| Description |
Titan's Variety |
| Full Description |
Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage http://ciclops.org . *Credit:* NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute, This map of Titan's surface brightness was assembled from images taken by the Cassini spacecraft over the past year, both as it approached the Saturn system and during three closer flybys in July, October and December 2004. Due to Titan's thick, hazy atmosphere, the size of surface features that can be resolved is a few to five times larger than the actual pixel scale. The pixel scales of the individual images in the map range from 88 to 2 kilometers (55 miles to 1 mile), so the scales of the surface features that can be resolved range from 180 to 10 kilometers (112 to 6 miles). The images were acquired using a near-infrared filter (centered at 938 nanometers) that has been proven effective at peering through Titan's haze to its troposphere and surface. Similar to a cloudy day on Earth, these images indicate only brightness variations, there are no shadows or topographic shading effects. The map reveals complex patterns of bright and dark material on Titan's surface. The large scale features, including Xanadu Regio -- the large, bright feature that extends from approximately 80 degrees to 130 degrees west near the equator -- have been observed from Earth over the past several years. The patterns seem to vary with latitude. Close to the equator there is more contrast in the large-scale bright and dark features, with some strikingly linear boundaries that are suggestive of geologic processes at work within Titan's crust. The southern-middle latitudes are more uniformly bright, whereas there is more dark material near the south pole. The very bright features near the south pole are clouds. High northern latitudes are not illuminated during the current season on Titan, which is southern summer. Cassini-Huygens scientists are investigating what causes the latitudinal variation in brightness. One possibility is that, similar to Earth, some parts of the surface receive higher amounts of precipitation than others over Titan's long year (29.5 Earth years), resulting in different amounts of erosion across the surface. The Huygens probe landed at approximately 10 degrees south, 190 degrees west, near a boundary between dark and bright material. By combining Huygens' very high-resolution observations (see Titan Descent) with Cassini's regional and global-scale, lower-resolution images of Titan, as well as Cassini radar and the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer observations (see Cat Scratches and Titan's Complex Surface, respectively), Cassini-Huygens scientists are working to unravel the complex history of Titan's surface. 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 team is based at the |
| Date |
March 9, 2005 |
|
| Description |
Here on the Gallery page you can find the very latest images, videos and products from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, including the spectacular launch, spacecraft assembly and the exciting trip to Saturn. |
| Full Description |
One moment in an ancient, orbital dance is caught in this color picture taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Dec. 7, 2000, just as two of Jupiter's four major moons, Europa and Callisto, were nearly perfectly aligned with each other and the center of the planet. The distances are deceiving. Europa, seen against Jupiter, is 600,000 kilometers (370,000 miles) above the planet's cloud tops. Callisto, at lower left, is nearly three times that distance from the cloud tops. Europa is a bit smaller than Earth's Moon and has one of the brightest surfaces in the solar system. Callisto is 50 percent bigger -- roughly the size of Saturn's largest satellite, Titan -- and three times darker than Europa. Its brightness had to be enhanced in this picture, relative Europa's and Jupiter's, in order for Callisto to be seen in this image. Europa and Callisto have had very different geologic histories but share some surprising similarities, such as surfaces rich in ice. Callisto has apparently not undergone major internal compositional stratification, but Europa's interior has differentiated into a rocky core and an outer layer of nearly pure ice. Callisto's ancient surface is completely covered by large impact craters: The brightest features seen on Callisto in this image were discovered by the Voyager spacecraft in 1979 to be bright craters, like those on our Moon. In contrast, Europa's young surface is covered by a wild tapestry of ridges, chaotic terrain and only a handful of large craters. Recent data from the magnetometer carried by the Galileo spacecraft, which has been in orbit around Jupiter since 1995, indicate the presence of conducting fluid, most likely salty water, inside both Callisto and Europa. Scientists are eager to discover whether the surface of Saturn's Titan resembles that of Callisto or Europa, or whether it is entirely different, when Cassini finally reaches its destination in 2004. Cassini 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 Cassini mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona For higher resolution, click here. |
|
Prometheus and Pandora
| Description |
Here on the Gallery page you can find the very latest images, videos and products from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, including the spectacular launch, spacecraft assembly and the exciting trip to Saturn. |
| Full Description |
Cassini has sighted Prometheus and Pandora, the two F-ring-shepherding moons whose unpredictable orbits both fascinate scientists and wreak havoc on the F ring. Prometheus (102 kilometers, or 63 miles across) is visible left of center in the image, inside the F ring. Pandora (84 kilometers, or 52 miles across) appears above center, outside the ring. The dark shadow cast by the planet stretches more than halfway across the A ring, the outermost main ring. The mottled pattern appearing in the dark regions of the image is 'noise' in the signal recorded by the camera system, which has subsequently been magnified by the image processing. The F ring is a narrow, ribbon-like structure, with a width seen in this geometry equivalent to a few kilometers. The two small, irregularly shaped moons exert a gravitational influence on particles that make up the F ring, confining it and possibly leading to the formation of clumps, strands and other structures observed there. Pandora prevents the F ring from spreading outward and Prometheus prevents it from spreading inward. However, their interaction with the ring is complex and not fully understood. The shepherds are also known to be responsible for many of the observed structures in Saturn's A ring. The moons, which were discovered in images returned by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1980, are in chaotic orbits--their orbits can change unpredictably when the moons get very close to each other. This strange behavior was first noticed in ground-based and Hubble Space Telescope observations in 1995, when the rings were seen nearly edge-on from Earth and the usual glare of the rings was reduced, making the satellites more readily visible than usual. The positions of both satellites at that time were different than expected based on Voyager data. One of the goals for the Cassini-Huygens mission is to derive more precise orbits for Prometheus and Pandora. Seeing how their orbits change over the duration of the mission will help to determine their masses, which in turn will help constrain models of their interiors and provide a more complete understanding of their effect on the rings. This narrow angle camera image was snapped through the broadband green spectral filter, centered at 568 nanometers, on March 10, 2004, when the spacecraft was 55.5 million kilometers (34.5 million miles) from the planet. Image scale is approximately 333 kilometers (207 miles) per pixel. Contrast has been greatly enhanced, and the image has been magnified to aid visibility of the moons as well as structure in the rings. 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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. For more information about the, Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org . Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
|
Colorful Threads and Shadows
| Description |
Here on the Gallery page you can find the very latest images, videos and products from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, including the spectacular launch, spacecraft assembly and the exciting trip to Saturn. |
| Full Description |
Saturn's faintly banded atmosphere is delicately colored and its threadbare rings cross their own shadows in this marvelous natural color view from Cassini. The planet and its rings would nearly fill the space between Earth and the Moon. Yet, despite their great breadth, the rings are a few meters thick and in some places, very translucent. In this image, we can see through the C ring, which is closest to Saturn, and through the Cassini division, the 4,800-kilometer- (2,980-mile-) wide gap that arcs across the top of the image and separates the optically thick B ring from the A ring. The part of the atmosphere seen through the gap appears darker and more bluish due to scattering at blue wavelengths by the cloud-free upper atmosphere. The different colors in Saturn's atmosphere are due to particles whose composition is yet to be determined. The image was obtained with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on July 30, 2004, at a distance of 7.6 million kilometers (4.7 million miles) from Saturn. Images taken with red, green and blue filters were combined to create this color view. The image scale is 46 kilometers (28 miles) 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 Cassini-Huygens 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 team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org . Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
|
Phoebe's Mineral Distributio
…
| Description |
Phoebe's Mineral Distribution |
| Full Description |
These set of images were created during the Phoebe flyby on June 11, 2004. The images show the location and distribution of water-ice, ferric iron, carbon dioxide and an unidentified material on the tiny moon of Saturn. The first image was taken with Cassini's narrow angle camera and is shown for comparison purposes only. The other images were taken by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer onboard Cassini. The infrared image of Phoebe obtained at a distance of about 16,000 km (10,000 miles) shows a large range of bright and dark features. The resolution of the image is about 4 km (2.5 miles). carbon dioxide on the surface of Phoebe is distributed globally, although it appears to be more prevalent in the darker regions of the satellite. The existence of carbon dioxide strongly suggests that Phoebe did not originate in the asteroid belt, but rather in much colder regions of the Solar System such as the Kuiper Belt. The Kuiper Belt is a vast reservoir of small, primitive bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. An unidentified substance also appears to be more abundant in the darker regions. A map showing the distribution of water ice (blue), ferric iron (red), which is common in minerals on Earth and other planets, and the unidentified material (green). Water ice is associated with the brighter regions, while the other two materials are more abundant in the darker regions. 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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer home page at http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu/ . Image Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona |
|
Saturn's Anti-Hurricanes
| Description |
Saturn's Anti-Hurricanes |
| Full Description |
Vortices mingle amidst other turbulent motions in Saturn's atmosphere in these two comparison images. The image on the right was taken about two Saturn rotations after the image on the left. Both views show latitudes from minus 23 degrees to minus 42 degrees. The region below center in these images (at minus 35 degrees) has seen regular storm activity since Cassini first approached Saturn in early 2004. Cassini investigations of the atmosphere from February to October 2004 showed that most of the oval-shaped storms in the latitude region near minus 35 degrees rotate in a counter-clockwise direction, with smaller storms occasionally merging into larger ones (see Saturn Movie and Saturn Movie Closeup for a movie of storm activity in this region). On Earth, hurricanes in the Southern Hemisphere rotate clockwise. Thus, the storms in these images of Saturn's southern latitudes could be called "anti-hurricanes." This backwards spiraling (compared to Earth) is common on the giant planets. The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 4 and 5, 2005, using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 750 nanometers. During this time, Cassini's distance from Saturn was approximately 2.4 million kilometers (1.5 million miles). The image scale is about 14 kilometers (9 miles) 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 |
August 11, 2005 |
|
Phoebe Temperature Maps
| Description |
Phoebe Temperature Maps |
| Full Description |
A montage of maps of Saturn's moon Phoebe shows surface temperatures at various times of day as determined by the composite infrared spectrometer onboard Cassini during the June 11, 2004, Phoebe flyby. The asterisk on each map shows the location of the subsolar point, where the Sun is directly overhead. This point moves across the surface as Phoebe rotates. It is morning in regions to the left of the subsolar point, and afternoon in regions to the right. Like a newspaper weather map, different colors indicate different temperatures, though Phoebe's temperatures are distinctly cooler than even the coldest January day on Earth. Equatorial temperatures peak in the early afternoon near 112 Kelvin (-257 Fahrenheit), plunging to 78 Kelvin (-319 Fahrenheit) before dawn, and are even colder at higher latitudes. The large day/night temperature contrasts imply that Phoebe's surface is covered in loose dust or ice particles that store little heat and thus cool off rapidly at night. Regions of Phoebe's surface that were not observed are shown in black. Most of the maps show the effect on surface temperatures of the large crater-like depression seen in Cassini's visible-wavelength images of Phoebe, which is located just left of center in these maps. Crater walls that are shadowed and cold in the early morning in the first map are sunlit and warm in the late afternoon in the final map. 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 Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The composite infrared spectrometer team is based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini composite infrared spectrometer home page at http://cirs.gsfc.nasa.gov/ . Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Goddard Space Flight Center |
|
Faint Southern Clouds
| Description |
Faint Southern Clouds |
| Full Description |
This clear-filter view of Saturn's moon Titan reveals a region of cloud activity at high southern latitudes. Titan is 5,150 kilometers (3,200 miles) across. Cassini observations have generally been consistent with Earth-based observations that indicate the south-polar fields of clouds that had been observed frequently in 2004 haven't been present in 2005. This image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 31, 2005, at a distance of approximately 3.3 million kilometers (2 million miles) from Titan and at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 70 degrees. The image scale is 20 kilometers (12 miles) per pixel. North on Titan is up and rotated about 20 degrees to the left. The view has been mildly enhanced to make the cloud feature more easily visible. 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 |
September 29, 2005 |
|
Leaving Earth
| title |
Leaving Earth |
| date |
06.10.2003 |
| description |
This spectacular shot of solid rocket motors separating from a Delta II rocket over Florida was captured during the June 10 liftoff of the Mars Exploration Rover, Spirit. The rover and its twin, Opportunity, will arrive at Mars in January 2004. |
|
Rosetta Deploys Lander
| title |
Rosetta Deploys Lander |
| description |
This artist's impression shows the Rosetta spacecraft, its lander, and a comet. Rosetta's 11-year mission began on March 2, 2004, with an Ariane-5 launch from Kourou in French Guiana. The three-tonne spacecraft will first be inserted into a parking orbit around Earth, before being sent on its way towards the outer Solar System. *Image Credit*: ESA 2001 |
|
Martian Meteorite
| title |
Martian Meteorite |
| description |
NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has found an iron meteorite, the first meteorite of any type ever identified on another planet. The pitted, basketball-size object is mostly made of iron and nickel according to readings from spectrometers on the rover. Only a small fraction of the meteorites fallen on Earth are similarly metal-rich. Others are rockier. As an example, the meteorite that blasted the famous Meteor Crater in Arizona is similar in composition. "This is a huge surprise, though maybe it shouldn't have been," said Dr. Steve Squyres of Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., principal investigator for the science instruments on Opportunity and its twin, Spirit. The meteorite, dubbed "Heat Shield Rock," sits near debris of Opportunity's heat shield on the surface of Meridiani Planum, a cratered flatland that has been Opportunity's home since the robot landed on Mars nearly one year ago. "I never thought we would get to use our instruments on a rock from someplace other than Mars," Squyres said. "Think about where an iron meteorite comes from: a destroyed planet or planetesimal that was big enough to differentiate into a metallic core and a rocky mantle." Rover-team scientists are wondering whether some rocks that Opportunity has seen atop the ground surface are rocky meteorites. "Mars should be hit by a lot more rocky meteorites than iron meteorites," Squyres said. "We've been seeing lots of cobbles out on the plains, and this raises the possibility that some of them may in fact be meteorites. We may be investigating some of those in coming weeks. The key is not what we'll learn about meteorites -- we have lots of meteorites on Earth -- but what the meteorites can tell us about Meridiani Planum." The numbers of exposed meteorites could be an indication of whether the plain is gradually eroding away or being built up. NASA Chief Scientist Dr. Jim Garvin said, "Exploring meteorites is a vital part of NASA's scientific agenda, and discovering whether there are storehouses of them on Mars opens new research possibilities, including further incentives for robotic and then human-based sample-return missions. Mars continues to provide unexpected science 'gold,' and our rovers have proven the value of mobile exploration with this latest finding." Initial observation of Heat Shield Rock from a distance with Opportunity's miniature thermal emission spectrometer suggested a metallic composition and raised speculation last week that it was a meteorite. The rover drove close enough to use its Moessbauer and alpha particle X-ray spectrometers, confirming the meteorite identification over the weekend. Opportunity and Spirit successfully completed their primary three-month missions on Mars in April 2004. NASA has extended their missions twice because the rovers have remained in good condition to continue exploring Mars longer than anticipated. They have found geological evidence of past wet environmental conditions that might have, been hospitable to life. Opportunity has driven a total of 2.10 kilometers (1.30 miles). Minor mottling from dust has appeared in images from the rover's rear hazard-identification camera since Opportunity entered the area of its heat-shield debris, said Jim Erickson of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., rover project manager. The rover team plans to begin driving Opportunity south toward a circular feature called "Vostok" within about a week. Spirit has driven a total of 4.05 kilometers (2.52 miles). It has been making slow progress uphill toward a ridge on "Husband Hill" inside Gusev Crater. *Image Credit*: NASA |
|
10,000 Galaxies
| title |
10,000 Galaxies |
| date |
01.16.2004 |
| description |
Galaxies, galaxies everywhere - as far as NASA's Hubble Space Telescope can see. This view of nearly 10,000 galaxies is the deepest visible-light image of the cosmos. Called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field, this galaxy-studded view represents a "deep" core sample of the universe, cutting across billions of light-years. The snapshot includes galaxies of various ages, sizes, shapes, and colors. The smallest, reddest galaxies, about 100, may be among the most distant known, existing when the universe was just 800 million years old. The nearest galaxies - the larger, brighter, well-defined spirals and ellipticals - thrived about 1 billion years ago, when the cosmos was 13 billion years old. In vibrant contrast to the rich harvest of classic spiral and elliptical galaxies, there is a zoo of oddball galaxies littering the field. Some look like toothpicks, others like links on a bracelet. A few appear to be interacting. These oddball galaxies chronicle a period when the universe was younger and more chaotic. Order and structure were just beginning to emerge. The Ultra Deep Field observations, taken by the Advanced Camera for Surveys, represent a narrow, deep view of the cosmos. Peering into the Ultra Deep Field is like looking through an eight-foot-long soda straw. In ground-based photographs, the patch of sky in which the galaxies reside (just one-tenth the diameter of the full Moon) is largely empty. Located in the constellation Fornax, the region is so empty that only a handful of stars within the Milky Way galaxy can be seen in the image. In this image, blue and green correspond to colors that can be seen by the human eye, such as hot, young, blue stars and the glow of Sun-like stars in the disks of galaxies. Red represents near-infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye, such as the red glow of dust-enshrouded galaxies. The image required 800 exposures taken over the course of 400 Hubble orbits around Earth. The total amount of exposure time was 11.3 days, taken between Sept. 24, 2003 and Jan. 16, 2004. *Image Credit*: NASA, ESA, S. Beckwith (STScI) and the HUDF Team |
|
Earth From Mars
| title |
Earth From Mars |
| date |
03.08.2004 |
| description |
This is the first image ever taken of Earth from the surface of a planet beyond the Moon. It was taken by the Mars Exploration Rover Spirit one hour before sunrise on the 63rd Martian day, or sol, of its mission. The image is a mosaic of images taken by the rover's navigation camera showing a broad view of the sky, and an image taken by the rover's panoramic camera of Earth. The contrast in the panoramic camera image was increased two times to make Earth easier to see.The inset shows a combination of four panoramic camera images zoomed in on Earth. The arrow points to Earth. Earth was too faint to be detected in images taken with the panoramic camera's color filters. *Image Credit*: NASA/JPL/Cornell/Texas A&M |
|
Stellar Quakes
| title |
Stellar Quakes |
| date |
12.27.2004 |
| description |
On December 27, 2004, a neutron star flared up so brightly, it temporarily blinded all the X-ray satellites in space for an instant, and lit up the Earth's upper atmosphere. This tremendous blast of energy was from a giant flare created by the neutron star's twisting magnetic field. Objects like this are called magnetars, and they produce magnetic fields trillions of time more powerful than those here on Earth. These fields are so strong they can actually buckle the surface of the neutron star causing these powerful star quakes. |
|
Home Reef Reborn
| title |
Home Reef Reborn |
| description |
In the South Pacific, south of Late Island along the Tofua volcanic arc in Tonga, the volcanic island Home Reef is being re-born. The island is thought to have emerged after a volcanic eruption in mid-August that also spewed large amounts of floating pumice into Tongan waters and swept across to Fiji about 350 km (220 miles) to the west of where the new island formed. In 2004, a similar eruption created an ephemeral island about 0.5 by 1.5 km (0.3 by 0.9 miles) in size, it was no longer visible in an ASTER image acquired November 2005. This simulated natural color image shows the vegetation-covered stratovolcanic island of Late Island in the upper right. Home Reef is found in the lower left. The two bluish plumes are hot seawater that is laden with volcanic ash and chemicals, the larger one can be traced for more than 14 km (8.4 miles) to the east. The image was acquired Oct. 10, 2006 and covers an area of 24.3 by 30.2 km. It is located at 18.9 degrees south latitude, 174.7 degrees west longitude. With its 14 spectral bands from the visible to the thermal infrared wavelength region, and its high spatial resolution of 15 to 90 meters (about 50 to 300 feet), ASTER images Earth to map and monitors the changing surface of our planet. It is one of five Earth-observing instruments launched Dec. 18, 1999, on NASA's Terra satellite. The instrument was built by Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry. A joint U.S./Japan science team is responsible for validation and calibration of the instrument and the data products. Image credit: NASA/GSFC/METI/ERSDAC/JAROS and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team |
|
Jupiter Aurora
| title |
Jupiter Aurora |
| description |
In this Hubble telescope picture, a curtain of glowing gas is wrapped around Jupiter's north pole like a lasso. This curtain of light, called an aurora, is produced when high-energy electrons race along the planet's magnetic field and into the upper atmosphere where they excite atmospheric gases, causing them to glow. The aurora resembles the same phenomenon that crowns Earth's polar regions. But this Hubble image, taken in ultraviolet light, also shows the glowing "footprints" of three of Jupiter's largest moons: Io, Ganymede, and Europa. Spanning next two months in 2004, Jupiter's aurora will be scrutinized by two observatories: the Hubble telescope and the Cassini spacecraft, which will fly by the planet on its voyage to Saturn. *Image Credit*: John Clarke (University of Michigan) and NASA |
|
Columbia Memorial
| title |
Columbia Memorial |
| date |
01.06.2004 |
| description |
The landing site of the Mars Spirit rover in honor of the astronauts who died in the tragic accident of the Space Shuttle Columbia in February. The area in the vast flatland of the Gusev Crater where Spirit landed this weekend will be called the Columbia Memorial Station. Since its historic landing, Spirit has been sending extraordinary images of its new surroundings on the red planet over the past few days. Among them, an image of a memorial plaque placed on the spacecraft to Columbia's astronauts and the STS-107 mission. The plaque is mounted on the back of Spirit's high-gain antenna, a disc-shaped tool used for communicating directly with Earth. The plaque is aluminum and approximately six inches in diameter. The memorial plaque was attached March 28, 2003, at the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center, Fla. Chris Voorhees and Peter Illsley, Mars Exploration Rover engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., designed the plaque. *Image Credit*: NASA |
|
Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasime
…
| title |
Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko |
| description |
This image shows a composite image of the nucleus of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko (the point of light at the centre), recorded on Feb. 26, 2004, at 6:15 UT with the SUSI-2 camera on the 3.5-m New Technology Telescope. It is based on fifteen series of exposures seen in three different wavebands and since the images were aligned on the comet, the images of stars in the field are trailed. The fact that the image of the comet's 'dirty snowball' nucleus is almost star-like indicates that it is surrounded by a very small amount of gas or dust. The distance to the comet from the Earth was approx. 600 million km (373 million miles). The European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft launched on March 2, 2004 on a 10-year journey to intercept and study the comet. *Image Credit*: European Southern Observatory |
|
Distant Saturn
| title |
Distant Saturn |
| date |
10.21.2002 |
| description |
Saturn appears serene and majestic in the first color composite made of images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on its approach to the ringed planet, with arrival still 20 months away. The planet was 285 million kilometers (177 million miles) away from the spacecraft, nearly twice the distance between the Sun and Earth, when Cassini took images of it in various filters as an engineering test on Oct. 21, 2002. It is summer in Saturn's southern hemisphere. The Sun is a lofty 27 degrees below the equator and casts a semi-circular shadow of the planet on the rings. The shadow extends partway across the rings, leaving the outer A ring in sunlight. The last Saturn-bound spacecraft, Voyager 2, arrived in early northern spring. Many features seen in Voyager images -- spoke-like markings on the rings, clouds and eddies in the hazy atmosphere, ring-shepherding moons -- are not yet visible to Cassini. Titan, Saturn's largest moon, appears in the upper left. It is the only moon resolved from this distance. This composite uses a threefold enhancement in the brightness of Titan relative to the brightness of Saturn. Titan is a major attraction for scientists of the Cassini-Huygens mission. They will study its haze-enshrouded atmosphere and peer down, with special instrumentation, to its surface to look for evidence of organic processes similar to those that might have occurred on the early Earth, prior to the emergence of life. Cassini will enter orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004. It will release a piggybacked probe, Huygens, which will descend through Titan's atmosphere on Jan. 14, 2005. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. Information about the mission is available online at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. *Image Credit*: NASA/JPL/Southwest Research Institute |
|
Icy Comet NEAT
| title |
Icy Comet NEAT |
| date |
05.07.2004 |
| description |
This image of Comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) was taken at the WIYN 0.9-meter telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, AZ, on May 7, 2004. The image was taken with the Mosaic I camera, which has a one-square degree field of view, or about five times the size of the Moon. Even with this large field, only the comet's coma and the inner portion of its tail are visible. This color image was assembled by combining images taken through blue, green and red filters. A small star cluster (C0736-105, or Melotte 72) is visible in the lower right of the image, between the head of the comet and the bright red star in the lower-right corner. Comet C/2001 Q4 (NEAT) was discovered on August 24, 2001, by the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) system operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA. *Image Credit*: T. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage), Z. Levay and L.Frattare (Space Telescope Science Institute) and National Optical Astronomy Observatory/Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy/National Science Foundation |
|
SMART-1 Looks Back
| title |
SMART-1 Looks Back |
| description |
The first picture of Earth taken by the SMART-1 spacecraft on 21 May 2004 from a distance of 70,000 kilometres. The image shows from top left, Scandinavia, Denmark, United Kingdom and clear west and northern France. Southern France and Spain are at the centre under cloud cover. North Africa is bottom right (in the full-resoltion image). The image was taken by the Advanced Moon Micro-Imager Experiment (AMIE) camera. This imaging system has been developed by the Space-X company in Neuchatel, Switzerland. The AMIE camera is a remarkably compact design, a package of dedicated optics, electronics and mechanical interfaces that weighs only 450 grams. Once in orbit around the Moon, AMIE will survey the lunar terrain using visible and near-infrared light, providing clues about its chemical composition and geological history."The image shows clearly that the AMIE camera works well, and that we are really in space," says Principal Investigator Jean Luc Josset, Space-X."This picture is a great view of Earth seen as a planet," says ESA Project Scientist Bernard Foing. "Further synoptic images of Earth obtained during the cruise phase will be used to compare the signature of geophysical processes with what we shall measure on the Moon." *Image Credit*: European Space Agency |
|
Phoebe's Mineral Map
| title |
Phoebe's Mineral Map |
| date |
06.11.2004 |
| description |
This set of images were created during the Cassini spacecraft's Phoebe flyby on June 11, 2004. The images show the location and distribution of water-ice, ferric iron, carbon dioxide and an unidentified material on the tiny moon of Saturn. The first image was taken with Cassini's narrow angle camera and is shown for comparison purposes only. The other images were taken by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer onboard Cassini. The infrared image of Phoebe obtained at a distance of about 16,000 km (10,000 miles) shows a large range of bright and dark features. The resolution of the image is about 4 km (2.5 miles). carbon dioxide on the surface of Phoebe is distributed globally, although it appears to be more prevalent in the darker regions of the satellite. The existence of carbon dioxide strongly suggests that Phoebe did not originate in the asteroid belt, but rather in much colder regions of the Solar System such as the Kuiper Belt. The Kuiper Belt is a vast reservoir of small, primitive bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. An unidentified substance also appears to be more abundant in the darker regions. A map showing the distribution of water ice (blue), ferric iron (red), which is common in minerals on Earth and other planets, and the unidentified material (green). Water ice is associated with the brighter regions, while the other two materials are more abundant in the darker regions. *Image Credit*: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona |
|
The Stuff of Rings
| title |
The Stuff of Rings |
| date |
07.01.2004 |
| description |
Evidence from the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer on the Cassini spacecraft indicates that the grain sizes in Saturn's rings grade from smaller to larger, related to distance from Saturn. Those data (right) are shown next to a corresponding picture of the rings taken by Cassini's narrow angle camera. Saturn's rings are thought to be made up of boulder-size snowballs. By looking at the rings with the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, the size of the ice crystals, or grains, on the surfaces of those boulders can be determined. This visual and infrared mapping spectrometer has a spatial resolution similar to that of the human eye, so it provides a view analogous to standing on the spacecraft. Only instead of looking at the rings in visible wavelengths, the instrument sees wavelengths beyond what human eyes can see, ranging from the ultraviolet to the infrared. The latest observations show that grain sizes range from very small, like powdery snow on Earth, to larger grains, like more granular snow. The visual and infrared mapping spectrometer can also see the fingerprint signatures of chemical bonds, and, in this case, it spotted the bonds of frozen water molecules. Saturn's rings are made mostly of water in the form of ice. While this has been known for many years, the Cassini data are showing that the ring ice is more pure than previously thought, with the most pure ices generally being observed at increasing distances from Saturn. *Image Credit*: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona |
|
Venus Transit
| title |
Venus Transit |
| date |
06.08.2004 |
| description |
NASA's TRACE satellite captured this image of Venus crossing the face of the Sun as seen from Earth orbit. The last event occurred in 1882. The next Venus transit will be visible in 2012. *Image Credit*: NASA |
|
MESSENGER Launch
| title |
MESSENGER Launch |
| date |
08.03.2004 |
| description |
The tip of the Boeing Delta II rocket with its MESSENGER spacecraft on top breaks through the billows of smoke below as it lifts off on time at 2:15:56 a.m. EDT on Aug. 3, 2004 from Launch Pad 17-B, Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. MESSENGER (Mercury Surface, Space Environment, Geochemistry and Ranging) is on a seven-year journey to the planet Mercury. The spacecraft will fly by Earth, Venus and Mercury several times to burn off energy before making its final approach to the inner planet on March 18, 2011. *Image Credit*: NASA |
|
An Asteroid's Sky Trek
| title |
An Asteroid's Sky Trek |
| description |
While analyzing NASA Hubble Space Telescope images of the Sagittarius dwarf irregular galaxy (SagDIG), an international team of astronomers led by Simone Marchi, Yazan Momany, and Luigi Bedin were surprised to see the trail of a faint asteroid that had drifted across the field of view during the exposures. The trail is seen as a series of 13 reddish arcs on the right in this August 2003 Advanced Camera for Surveys image. As the Hubble telescope orbits around the Earth, and the Earth moves around the Sun, a nearby asteroid in our solar system will appear to move with respect to the vastly more distant background stars, due to an effect called parallax. It is somewhat similar to the effect you see from a moving car, in which trees by the side of the road appear to be moving much more rapidly than background objects at much larger distances. If the Hubble exposure were a continuous one, the asteroid trail would appear like a continuous wavy line. However, the exposure with Hubble's camera was actually broken up into more than a dozen separate exposures. After each exposure, the camera's shutter was closed while the image was transferred from the electronic detector into the camera's computer memory, this accounts for the many interruptions in the asteroid's trail. Since the trajectory of the Hubble spacecraft around the Earth is known very accurately, it is possible to triangulate the distance to the asteroid in a manner similar to that used by terrestrial surveyors. It turns out to be a previously unknown asteroid, located 169 million miles from Earth at the time of observation. The distance places the new object, most likely, in the main asteroid belt, lying between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Based on the observed brightness of the asteroid, the astronomers estimate that it has a diameter of about 1.5 miles. The brightest stars in the picture (easily distinguished by the spikes radiating from their images, produced by optical effects within the telescope), are foreground stars lying within our own Milky Way galaxy. Their distances from Earth are typically a few thousand light-years. The faint, bluish SagDIG stars lie at about 3.5 million light-years (1.1 Megaparsecs) from us. Lastly, background galaxies (reddish/brown extended objects with spiral arms and halos) are located even further beyond SagDIG at several tens of millions parsecs away. There is thus a vast range of distances among the objects visible in this photo, ranging from about 169 million miles for the asteroid, up to many quadrillions of miles for the faint, small galaxies. The team reported their science findings about the asteroid in the October 2004 issue of New Astronomy. *Image Credit*: NASA, ESA, and Y. Momany (University of Padua) |
|
Zooming in on Xanadu
| title |
Zooming in on Xanadu |
| date |
10.24.2004 |
| description |
This image taken on Oct. 24, 2004, reveals Titan's bright "continent-sized" terrain known as Xanadu. It was acquired with the narrow angle camera on Cassini's imaging science subsystem through a spectral filter centered at 938 nanometers, a wavelength region at which Titan's surface can be most easily detected. The surface is seen at a higher contrast than in previously released imaging science subsystem images due to a lower phase angle (Sun-Titan-Cassini angle), which minimizes scattering by the haze. The image shows details about 10 times smaller than those seen from Earth. Surface materials with different brightness properties (or albedos) rather than topographic shading are highlighted. The image has been calibrated and slightly enhanced for contrast. It will be further processed to reduce atmospheric blurring and to optimize mapping of surface features. The origin and geography of Xanadu remain mysteries at this range. Bright features near the south pole (bottom) are clouds. On Oct. 26, Cassini will acquire images of features in the central-left portion of this image from a position about 100 times closer. *Image Credit*: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute |
|
Triple Eclipse
| title |
Triple Eclipse |
| description |
At first glance, Jupiter looks like it has a mild case of the measles. Five spots - one colored white, one blue, and three black are scattered across the upper half of the planet. Closer inspection by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope reveals that these spots are actually a rare alignment of three of Jupiter's largest moons - Io, Ganymede, and Callisto - across the planet's face. In this image, the telltale signatures of this alignment are the shadows [the three black circles] cast by the moons. Io's shadow is located just above center and to the left, Ganymede's on the planet's left edge, and Callisto's near the right edge. Only two of the moons, however, are visible in this image. Io is the white circle in the center of the image, and Ganymede is the blue circle at upper right. Callisto is out of the image and to the right. On Earth, we witness a solar eclipse when our Moon's shadow sweeps across our planet's face as it passes in front of our Sun. Jupiter, however, has four moons roughly the same size as Earth's Moon. The shadows of three of them occasionally sweep simultaneously across Jupiter. The image was taken March 28, 2004, with Hubble's Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer. Seeing three shadows on Jupiter happens only about once or twice a decade. Why is this triple eclipse so unique? Io, Ganymede, and Callisto orbit Jupiter at different rates. Their shadows likewise cross Jupiter's face at different rates. For example, the outermost moon Callisto orbits the slowest of the three satellites. Callisto's shadow moves across the planet once for every 20 shadow crossings of Io. Add the crossing rate of Ganymede's shadow and the possibility of a triple eclipse becomes even more rare. Viewing the triple shadows in 2004 was even more special, because two of the moons were crossing Jupiter's face at the same time as the three shadows. Jupiter appears in pastel colors in this photo because the observation was taken in near-infrared light. Astronomers combined images taken in three near-infrared wavelengths to make this color image. The photo shows sunlight reflected from Jupiter's clouds. In the near infrared, methane gas in Jupiter's atmosphere limits the penetration of sunlight, which causes clouds to appear in different colors depending on their altitude. Studying clouds in near-infrared light is very useful for scientists studying the layers of clouds that make up Jupiter's atmosphere. Yellow colors indicate high clouds, red colors lower clouds, and blue colors even lower clouds in Jupiter's atmosphere. The green color near the poles comes from a thin haze very high in the atmosphere. Ganymede's blue color comes from the absorption of water ice on its surface at longer wavelengths. Io's white color is from light reflected off bright sulfur compounds on the satellite's surface. In viewing this rare alignment, astronomers also tested a new imaging technique. To increase the sharpness of the near-infrared camera images, astronomers, speeded up Hubble's tracking system so that Jupiter traveled through the telescope's field of view much faster than normal. This technique allowed scientists to take rapid-fire snapshots of the planet and its moons. They then combined the images into one single picture to show more details of the planet and its moons. *Image Credit*: NASA, ESA, and E. Karkoschka (University of Arizona) |
|
Uranus from Earth
| title |
Uranus from Earth |
| date |
07.11.2004 |
| description |
An infrared composite image of the two hemispheres of Uranus obtained with Keck adaptive optics. The component colors of blue, green, and red were obtained from images made at near infrared wavelengths of 1.26, 1.62, and 2.1 microns respectively. The images were obtained on July 11 and 12, 2004. The representative balance of these infrared images which were selected to display the vertical structure of atmospheric features gives a reddish tint to the rings, an artifact of the process. The North pole is at 4 o'clock. *Image Credit*: Lawrence Sromovsky, University of Wisconsin-Madison/ W. M. Keck Observatory |
|
Launch of Cassini Orbiter &
…
| Title |
Launch of Cassini Orbiter & Huygens Probe |
| Full Description |
A seven-year journey to the ringed planet Saturn begins with the liftoff of a Titan IVB/Centaur carrying the Cassini orbiter and its attached Huygens probe. Launch occurred at 4:43 a.m. EDT, October 15, 1997 from Launch Complex 40 on Cape Canaveral Air Station. After a 2.2-billion mile journey that will include two swing-bys of Venus and one of Earth to gain additional velocity, the two-storey tall spacecraft will arrive at Saturn in July 2004. The orbiter will circle the planet for four years, its complement of 12 scientific instruments gathering data about Saturn's atmosphere, rings and magnetosphere and conducting closeup observations of the Saturnian moons. Huygens, with a separate suite of six science instruments, will separate from Cassini to fly on a ballistic trajectory toward Titan, the only celestial body besides Earth to have an atmosphere rich in nitrogen. Scientists are eager to study further this chemical similarity in hopes of learning more about the origins of our own planet Earth. Huygens will provide the first direct sampling of Titan's atmospheric chemistry and the first detailed photographs of its surface. The Cassini mission is an international effort involving NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI). The Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the U.S. contribution to the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, DC. The major U.S. contractor is Lockheed Martin, which provided the launch vehicle and upper stage, spacecraft propulsion module and radioisotope thermoelectric generators that will provide power for the spacecraft. The Titan IV/Centaur is a U.S. Air Force launch vehicle, and launch operations were managed by the 45th Space Wing. |
| Date |
10/15/1997 |
| NASA Center |
Jet Propulsion Laboratory |
|
Hubble Panoramic View of Ori
…
| Title |
Hubble Panoramic View of Orion Nebula Reveals Thousands of Stars |
| General Information |
What is an American Astronomical Society Meeting release? A major news announcement issued at an American Astronomical Society meeting, the premier astronomy conference. In one of the most detailed astronomical images ever produced, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured an unprecedented look at the Orion Nebula. This turbulent star formation region is one of astronomy's most WATCH: HubbleMinute Video Hubble Minute: Hubble Snaps the Clearest View of the Orion Nebula Hubble Minute: Hubble Snaps the Clearest View of the Orion Nebula [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2006/01/video/a/ ] READ: Junior version of this article Amazing Space Learn about this story in the Star Witness, a science newspaper available on our sister site, Amazing Space. [ http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/news/archive/2006/01/ ] dramatic and photogenic celestial objects. More than 3,000 stars of various sizes appear in this image. Some of them have never been seen in visible light. These stars reside in a dramatic dust-and-gas landscape of plateaus, mountains, and valleys that are reminiscent of the Grand Canyon. The Orion Nebula is a picture book of star formation, from the massive, young stars that are shaping the nebula to the pillars of dense gas that may be the homes of budding stars. Read more: * NASA Press Release [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2006/01/text/ ] * The Full Story [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2006/01/full/ ] |
|
Hubble Panoramic View of Ori
…
| Title |
Hubble Panoramic View of Orion Nebula Reveals Thousands of Stars |
| General Information |
What is an American Astronomical Society Meeting release? A major news announcement issued at an American Astronomical Society meeting, the premier astronomy conference. In one of the most detailed astronomical images ever produced, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured an unprecedented look at the Orion Nebula. This turbulent star formation region is one of astronomy's most WATCH: HubbleMinute Video Hubble Minute: Hubble Snaps the Clearest View of the Orion Nebula Hubble Minute: Hubble Snaps the Clearest View of the Orion Nebula [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2006/01/video/a/ ] READ: Junior version of this article Amazing Space Learn about this story in the Star Witness, a science newspaper available on our sister site, Amazing Space. [ http://amazing-space.stsci.edu/news/archive/2006/01/ ] dramatic and photogenic celestial objects. More than 3,000 stars of various sizes appear in this image. Some of them have never been seen in visible light. These stars reside in a dramatic dust-and-gas landscape of plateaus, mountains, and valleys that are reminiscent of the Grand Canyon. The Orion Nebula is a picture book of star formation, from the massive, young stars that are shaping the nebula to the pillars of dense gas that may be the homes of budding stars. Read more: * NASA Press Release [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2006/01/text/ ] * The Full Story [ http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2006/01/full/ ] |
|
Saturn Seen from Far and Nea
…
| Title |
Saturn Seen from Far and Near |
|
Cloud Heights of Frances and
…
| Title |
Cloud Heights of Frances and Ivan |
| Description |
NASA's Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer [ http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov ] (MISR) captured these images and cloud-top height retrievals of Hurricane Frances on September 4, 2004, when the eye sat just off the coast of eastern Florida, and Hurricane Ivan on September 5, after the storm had devastated Grenada and was heading toward the central and western Caribbean. Hurricane Frances made landfall in the early hours of September 5, and was downgraded to Tropical Storm status as it swept inland through the Florida panhandle and continued northward. Following on the heels of Frances is Hurricane Ivan, which is on record as the strongest tropical hurricane to form at such a low latitude in the Atlantic, and was the most powerful storm to have hit the Caribbean in nearly a decade. The ability of forecasters to predict the intensity and amount of rainfall associated with hurricanes still requires improvement, especially on the 24- to 48-hour timescale vital for disaster planning. To improve the operational models used to make hurricane forecasts, scientists need to better understand the multi-scale interactions at the cloud, mesoscale and synoptic scales that lead to hurricane intensification and dissipation, as well as the various physical processes that determine hurricane intensity and rainfall distributions. Because these uncertainties with regard to how to represent cloud processes still exist, it is vital that the model findings be evaluated against hurricane observations whenever possible. Two-dimensional maps of cloud height such as those shown here offer an unprecedented opportunity for comparing simulated cloud fields against actual hurricane observations. The lefthand panel in each image pair is a natural-color view from MISR's nadir camera. The righthand panels are cloud-top height retrievals produced by automated computer recognition of the distinctive spatial features between images acquired at different view angles. These results indicate that at the time that these images were acquired, clouds within Frances and Ivan had attained altitudes of 15-16 kilometers (9-10 miles) above sea level, respectively. The height fields pictured here are uncorrected for the effects of cloud motion. Wind-corrected heights (which have higher accuracy but coarser spatial coverage) are within about 1 kilometer of the heights shown here. (Visit the Earth Observatory's Natural Hazards Severe Storms [ http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/NaturalHazards/natural_hazards_v2.php3?topic=storm ] section to view more recent images of Hurricanes Ivan and Frances.) The MISR observes the daylit Earth continuously and every 9 days views the entire globe between 82° north and 82° south latitude. These data products were generated from a portion of the imagery acquired during Terra [ http://terra.nasa.gov ], orbits 25081 and 25094. The panels cover an area of 380 kilometers x 924 kilometers, and utilize data from within blocks 65 to 87 within World Reference System-2 paths 14 and 222, respectively. MISR was built and is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, for NASA's Office of Earth Science, Washington, DC. The Terra satellite is managed by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology. NASA image courtesy GSFC/LaRC/JPL, MISR Team. [ http://www-misr.jpl.nasa.gov ] Text acknowledgment: Clare Averill (Raytheon/Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and Greg McFarquhar (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign). |
|
Hurricane Alex
| Title |
Hurricane Alex |
| Description |
This image and movie of Tropical Storm Alex was made with the infrared sensor in the AIRS instrument suite on August 2, 2004. Located in the Atlantic Ocean located about 80 miles south-southeast of Charleston, South Carolina, the storm is moving in a north/northeast path at 5 knots (6 mph). At the time of this observation, the storm had a maximum sustained wind speed of 35 knots (40 mph) with gusts to 45 knots (52 mph). The major contribution to radiation (infrared light) that AIRS infrared channels sense comes from different levels in the atmosphere, depending upon the channel wavelength. To create the movies, a set of AIRS infrared channels were selected which probe the atmosphere at progressively deeper levels. If there were no clouds, the color in each frame would be nearly uniform until the Earth's surface is encountered. The tropospheric air temperature warms at a rate of 6 K (about 11 F) for each kilometer of descent toward the surface. Thus the colors would gradually change from cold to warm as the movie progresses. Clouds block the infrared radiation. Thus wherever there are clouds we can penetrate no deeper in infrared. The color remains fixed as the movie progresses, for that area of the image is "stuck" to the cloud top temperature. The coldest temperatures around 220 K (about -65 F) come from altitudes of about 10 miles. We therefore see in a 'surface channel' at the end of the movie, signals from clouds as cold as 220 K and from Earth's surface at 310 K (about 100 F). The very coldest clouds are seen in deep convection thunderstorms over land. Image and movie courtesy of the AIRS Science Team [ http://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/ ] at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. |
|
|
