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Posted by Sarah Hörst on 2013/08/26 03:14 CDT | 11 comments
By now I hope that everyone has seen some of the spectacular images of the Saturn system (and especially Titan!) from the Cassini-Huygens mission. However, the measurements that often make my heart race are taken by instruments that reveal Titan in ways that our eyes cannot see.
Pretty picture: spectacular Saturn and Titan
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/08/15 08:04 CDT | 3 comments
A lovely view of the ringed planet and its hazy moon seen from nearly behind them just a few days ago.
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/07/29 01:18 CDT | 4 comments
Pushing back the frontier, and filling in the blank spaces on the map.
Jani Radebaugh, Titan Explorer
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/07/23 03:47 CDT | 4 comments
Robotic space exploration is human exploration. Meet one of the people behind the machines.
Pretty picture: Looking backward
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/07/23 05:03 CDT | 15 comments
Here it is: the view from Saturn of our Earthly home, one and a half billion kilometers away. We see Earth and the Moon through a thin veil of faintly blue ice crystals, the outskirts of Saturn's E ring. Earth is just a bright dot -- a bit brighter than the other stars in the image, but no brighter than any planet (like Saturn!) in our own sky.
Return of the Pale Blue Dot
Join the Wave at Saturn (and Mercury)!
Posted by Mat Kaplan on 2013/07/18 11:27 CDT | 4 comments
You can be part of a planetwide group photo as Cassini and MESSENGER turn their cameras Earthward on July 19.
The Space Computer and the Beautiful Worlds
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/06/30 11:31 CDT | 2 comments
An "Up Goer 5" tribute to the Cassini mission.
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/06/25 04:38 CDT | 6 comments
Meet some worlds that were nearly shattered, literally.
The Shores of the Kraken Sea: Great Place Names in the Solar System
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/05/28 08:59 CDT | 9 comments
Nothing reflects the romance of deep space exploration more than the evocative names of places on the planets and moons.
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/05/15 05:02 CDT | 6 comments
I've been out of town for a couple of days and am overwhelmed with work and an overflowing email box. So what do I do about that? I ignore what I'm supposed to be doing and play with Cassini raw image data, of course. Here is a "mutual event" of Mimas (the bigger moon) and Pandora (the outer shepherd of the F ring).
One of my favorite image processing tricks: colorizing images
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/04/23 02:11 CDT | 2 comments
An easy image processing trick -- using lower-resolution color data to colorize a black-and-white photo -- is relied upon by many space missions to keep data volumes low. Here's how to do it.
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/04/15 02:08 CDT | 3 comments
Cassini's unique views of Jupiter and Saturn.
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/04/08 09:12 CDT | 4 comments
Dispatches from five different worlds--all sent by robotic spacecraft on the same day.
LPSC 2013: License to Chill (or, the solar system's icy moons)
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/03/27 11:52 CDT
Reports from the March 19 session at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference covering eight icy moons in the outer solar system: Ganymede, Europa, Dione, Rhea, Mimas, Tethys, Enceladus, and Miranda.
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/03/04 12:25 CST | 2 comments
Look past the rings, and Saturn is even stranger--and more breathtaking.
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/02/18 10:20 CST | 2 comments
When the sunlight catches it just right, Saturn's F Ring is something to see.
Enceladus: A problem of contrast
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/01/30 07:00 CST | 6 comments
Time for my quarterly foray into the Cassini archival science data! The very first image I downloaded from the January 1, 2013 data release presented an interesting challenge to my image processing skill. I'll show you the pretty picture of Enceladus and then explain how I processed it.
That amazing image of Saturn's north pole just got better: now, it moves!
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/11/28 11:27 CST | 2 comments
Remember the amazing photo of Saturn's north pole that I posted yesterday? Now, thanks to an amateur image processor, it moves, and the motions of the individual clouds within the belts are mesmerizing.
Staring into Saturn's baleful eye
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/11/27 11:12 CST | 12 comments
Amazing photos have just come back from Cassini, of swirling clouds surrounding Saturn's north pole.
Watching the slow shift of seasons on Titan
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/11/06 02:45 CST | 1 comments
A sharp-eyed amateur noticed two images of Titan taken 20 months apart from nearly exactly the same perspective, and they illustrate how the shifting of Saturn's seasons has brought change to Titan's atmosphere.
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