Saturn in all its glory
Cool image time. The Cassini science team have released a beautiful full-color image of Saturn, shown cropped on the right, as well as a movie, both produced from images taken in April.
This view shows Saturn’s northern hemisphere in 2016, as that part of the planet nears its northern hemisphere summer solstice in May 2017. Saturn’s year is nearly 30 Earth years long, and during its long time there, Cassini has observed winter and spring in the north, and summer and fall in the south. The spacecraft will complete its mission just after northern summer solstice, having observed long-term changes in the planet’s winds, temperatures, clouds and chemistry.
Cassini scanned across the planet and its rings on April 25, 2016, capturing three sets of red, green and blue images to cover this entire scene showing the planet and the main rings. The images were obtained using Cassini’s wide-angle camera at a distance of approximately 1.9 million miles (3 million kilometers) from Saturn and at an elevation of about 30 degrees above the ring plane. The view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from a sun-Saturn-spacecraft angle, or phase angle, of 55 degrees. Image scale on Saturn is about 111 miles (178 kilometers) per pixel.
The exposures used to make this mosaic were obtained just prior to the beginning of a 44-hour movie sequence.
The only real tragedy here is that the Cassini mission is ending soon. When it does, it will be decades, at a minimum, before we have another spacecraft in orbit around Saturn and capable of giving us this view.
Update: NASA today issued a press release detailing what will happen during Cassini’s final year at Saturn, including 22 plunges between Saturn and its rings!
Cool image time. The Cassini science team have released a beautiful full-color image of Saturn, shown cropped on the right, as well as a movie, both produced from images taken in April.
This view shows Saturn’s northern hemisphere in 2016, as that part of the planet nears its northern hemisphere summer solstice in May 2017. Saturn’s year is nearly 30 Earth years long, and during its long time there, Cassini has observed winter and spring in the north, and summer and fall in the south. The spacecraft will complete its mission just after northern summer solstice, having observed long-term changes in the planet’s winds, temperatures, clouds and chemistry.
Cassini scanned across the planet and its rings on April 25, 2016, capturing three sets of red, green and blue images to cover this entire scene showing the planet and the main rings. The images were obtained using Cassini’s wide-angle camera at a distance of approximately 1.9 million miles (3 million kilometers) from Saturn and at an elevation of about 30 degrees above the ring plane. The view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from a sun-Saturn-spacecraft angle, or phase angle, of 55 degrees. Image scale on Saturn is about 111 miles (178 kilometers) per pixel.
The exposures used to make this mosaic were obtained just prior to the beginning of a 44-hour movie sequence.
The only real tragedy here is that the Cassini mission is ending soon. When it does, it will be decades, at a minimum, before we have another spacecraft in orbit around Saturn and capable of giving us this view.
Update: NASA today issued a press release detailing what will happen during Cassini’s final year at Saturn, including 22 plunges between Saturn and its rings!