Gallery: The best of Cassini shows Saturn’s rings, Titan’s surface and more

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Cassini, enceladus, Hyperion, Mimas, Saturn's rings, Saturn's storm, Titan, Titan's lakes

The colorful globe of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, passes in front of the planet and its rings in this true color snapshot from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Caption and photo courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

It was a real treat to see some of the newest photographs of Saturn’s moon Titan.

The photographs, obtained via the Cassini mission, were released this past holiday weekend. What perfect timing for us here at Space Oddities! We’ve been working on a photo gallery of our favorite Cassini images. And don’t forget, we should be getting even more new images of Titan fairly soon. The next Titan flyby is in five days.

In the meantime, here are a few of our favorite shots from the mission, which has been studying Saturn and many of its moons for the past seven years.

Saturn’s beauty

NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Oh, Saturn. How beautiful art thou? This image, taken in 2005, shows the breathtaking, gentle beauty Saturn has to offer. While the photograph was obtained using blue, green and red spectral filters, NASA says this is how we would actually see the ringed planet. (In good lighting, of course!)

 

Saturn’s intense storm

NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

This powerful storm, which began on Saturn’s northern hemisphere about a year ago, was so amazing that it became one of our first photos of the week. These photographs, taken from late 2010 through mid-2011, show the largest storm ever witnessed on Saturn, according to NASA. Read more about it here.

Planet of the rings

NASA/JPL/University of Colorado

When you think of Saturn, you obviously think of its rings, right? Well, I sure do. And here’s one of my favorite photographs of Saturn’s rings. The ultraviolet image, released in 2004, shows that Saturn’s outer rings contain more ice than its inner rings. This, according to NASA, hints “at the origins of the rings and their evolution.” Years after the image was released, we learned that the moon Enceladus does provides ice to Saturn’s rings. Read more about this image here.

 

Enceladus and its fountains

NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

This photograph shows the moon Enceladus and its fountain-like spray of water and ice. Read more about it here.

 

Rings and moons

NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

This photograph is amazing, isn’t it?! “Saturn’s rings cut across an eerie scene that is ruled by Titan’s luminous crescent and globe-encircling haze, broken by the small moon Enceladus, whose icy jets are dimly visible at its south pole,” according to this release. Wow. Just wow.

 

Phoebe

NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Here’s a composite image of Phoebe, one of Saturn’s smaller and irregularly shaped moons. “Phoebe shows an unusual variation in brightness over its surface due to the existence on some crater slopes and floors of bright material – thought to contain ice – on what is otherwise one of the darkest known bodies in the solar system,” according to this NASA release. I guess we could have included Phoebe in “The search for water beyond Earth” photo gallery.

 

Titan’s lakes

NASA/JPL/USGS

For the longest time, scientists believed that there were oceans or lakes of methane on Saturn’s moon Titan. It wasn’t until 2006 when radar imaging of Titan provided this evidence. “The lakes, darker than the surrounding terrain, are emphasized here by tinting regions of low backscatter in blue. Radar-brighter regions are shown in tan,” according to this release. However, NASA stated, “the colors are not a representation of what the human eye would see.” Boo.

 

Mimas

NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Ah yes, Mimas. This photograph, taken in 2010, shows the massive Herschel Crater, which reminds a lot of people of the Death Star. What do you think? The crater is 81 miles wide. Whoa. Read more here.

 

Rhea

NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Here’s the moon Rhea, pictured in front of Saturn and its rings. Read more here.

 

Titan’s surface

NASA/JPL/ESA/University of Arizona

Taken in 2005, this image was obtained by the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe during its successful descent to land on Titan, according to NASA. “This is the colored view, following processing to add reflection spectra data, and gives a better indication of the actual color of the surface.” Read more about Titan’s surface, and this photograph, here.

 

Hyperion

NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Hello my spongy-looking friend. This here is Hyperion, another one of Saturn’s moon. “Scientists think that Hyperion’s unusual appearance can be attributed to the fact that it has an unusually low density for such a large object, giving it weak surface gravity and high porosity,” according to this release.

 

Photo of the week: Enceladus and its ice

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Cassini, enceladus, NASA, Saturn

Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

From NASA:

“The moon Enceladus, one of the jewels of the Saturn system, sparkles peculiarly bright in new images obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The images of the moon, the first ever taken of Enceladus with Cassini’s synthetic aperture radar, reveal new details of some of the grooves in the moon’s south polar region and unexpected textures in the ice. These images, obtained on Nov. 6, 2011, are the highest-resolution images of this region obtained so far.”

Read more here.

Want to see more ice worlds? Check out our gallery.

Gallery: The search for water beyond Earth

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enceladus, europa ice, Mars water, moon water, triton, water in solar system

Europa's "Great Lake." Scientists speculate many more exist throughout the shallow regions of the moon's icy shell. Image Credit: Britney Schmidt/Dead Pixel FX/Univ. of Texas at Austin.

There’s now evidence that one of Jupiter’s moons has quite a bit of liquid water beneath its surface. The water on the moon, called Europa, is equal to that of the Great Lakes, according to NASA.

So what does it mean? Could there be microscopic life on Europa? After all, the search for life begins with the search for water.

Scientists believe many moons and planets have, or had, water on its surface or below its frozen core.

Here are some of those places.

Mars

Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech/Univ. of Arizona

In this early-2011 image of Mars, you can what looks like liquid flowing down a Martian slope. “Sequences of observations recording the seasonal changes at this site and a few others with similar flows might be evidence of salty liquid water active on Mars today,” according to NASA. Learn more about water on Mars here.

The moon

Courtesy of NASA/Sean Smith

In 2009, NASA announced that it had found a “significant amount” of water on the moon. ”We’re unlocking the mysteries of our nearest neighbor and by extension the solar system. It turns out the moon harbors many secrets,” said Michael Wargo, chief lunar scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. Read more about water on the moon here.

Europa – One of Jupiter’s moons

Courtesy of NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Jupiter has more than 60 moons, but one of its most famous is Europa. “The icy surface of Europa is shown strewn with cracks, ridges and chaotic terrain, where the surface has been disrupted and ice blocks have moved around,” according to NASA. Read more about Europa here.

Enceladus- One of Saturn’s moons

Courtesy of NASA/JPL/SSI

Oh Enceladus, how I love thee. This is one of my favorite moons because I feel it has a very good chance of having some sort of microscopic life. See the lines on the moon’s surface? Scientists believe they are caused by the release of plumes of water and ice. Those icy jets led researches to believe that a large body of water lies beneath the moon’s surface. Read more about Enceladus here.

Titan- One of Saturn’s moons

Courtesy of NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/DLR

This 2009 image shows the first flash of sunlight reflected off a lake on Saturn’s moon Titan, according to NASA. “It confirmed the presence of liquid in the moon’s northern hemisphere, where lakes are more numerous and larger than those in the southern hemisphere.” Read more about Titan here.

Triton- One of Neptune’s moons

Courtesy of NASA/JPL/USGS

Ah yes, Triton. Not to be confused with Titan. Why are they so similarly named? Anyway, Triton is Neptune’s largest moon. “It is unusual because it is the only large moon in our solar system that orbits in the opposite direction of its planet’s rotation — a retrograde orbit,” according to a release. “Triton is so cold that most of its nitrogen is condensed as frost, making it the only satellite in the solar system known to have a surface made mainly of nitrogen ice.” Read more about Triton here.

Outside of our solar system: TW Hydrae

Courtesy of NASA/JPL-Caltech

This artist’s concept illustrates an icy planet-forming disk around a young star called TW Hydrae. Astronomers detected large amounts of cool water vapor, illustrated in blue, emanating from the star’s planet-forming disk of dust and gas. Read more about TW Hydrae here.

Cassini to capture more images of Enceladus, Saturn’s icy moon

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Cassini, enceladus, enceladus ice, saturn's moon

The “first detailed radar images” of Enceladus, one of Saturn’s 60+ moons, were expected to be taken yesterday when NASA’s Cassini spacecraft flew by the icy body.

Artist's concept of the Nov. 6, 2011, flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

According to NASA:

These will be the first high-resolution radar observations made of an icy moon other than Titan. The results will provide new information about the surface of Enceladus and enable researchers to compare its geological features as seen by radar with those of Titan.

During this flyby, the mission’s visible-light cameras will take images of Enceladus and its famous jets, and the composite infrared spectrometer will make new measurements of hot spots from which the jets emerge. Cassini’s ultraviolet imaging spectrograph will also make distant observations of Saturn’s moon Dione and its environment.

 

It is believed that Enceladus’ jets  – think ‘Old-Faithful-like geysers erupting from giant fractures’ – supply ice to one of Saturn’s rings. Pretty cool, right?

This image of Saturn's moon Enceladus was obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on Jan. 31, 2011. It shows the famous jets erupting from the south polar terrain of Enceladus. Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI