Space Topics: Cassini-Huygens
Cassini, Day By Day
Since July 1, 2004, the Cassini spacecraft has been orbiting Saturn,
capturing images of the great globe and its attendant rings and moons every
day. The thousands of images returned to Earth so far represent a treasure
trove of data, a rich resource that will feed the hungry minds of planetary
scientists and amateur space explorers for years to come. The Planetary
Society's "Cassini,
Day By Day" pages were created to help you mine this treasure and become
a Saturn explorer yourself.
Each orbit of the Cassini spacecraft, apoapsis to
apoapsis, is designed for a specific kind of Saturn science. Cassini's
primary mission throughout the Saturn system will take it through 75 orbits
in total. Follow the links below to see selected raw images from every
day within each Cassini orbit.
All dates and times are UTC. All images are courtesy of NASA, JPL, and the
Space Science Institute. You can download the images from JPL's
raw image website.
Jump to the most recent images
Frequently Asked Questions
Rev 20 is part of the Icy Satellites and Magnetotail phase
of Cassini's tour of the Saturn system, during which
the spacecraft is orbiting Saturn very close to the plane of the rings.
The orbit began with a "mutual event" movie of Helene
and Titan.
Rev 19 was part of the Icy Satellites and
Magnetotail phase of Cassini's tour of the Saturn
system, during which the spacecraft is orbiting Saturn very close
to the plane of the rings. As Cassini swept towards periapsis, there
was a fortuitous close approach of Hyperion,
followed by interleaved observations of Rhea, Dione,
and Tethys. These were followed
by encounters of Enceladus and Telesto and
a targeted flyby of Titan (T9).
The rev also included "mutual
event" movies of Janus/Epimetheus, Mimas/Enceladus, Epimetheus/Janus,
and Enceladus/Dione, a true
color movie of Saturn's crescent disappearing behind Titan's limb,
a rare triple mutual event of Janus/Epimetheus/Dione,
and a stunning multiple mutual event of Epimetheus,
Titan, Dione, and Pandora against the background of Saturn and its narrow
rings.
Rev 18 was part of the Icy Satellites and
Magnetotail phase of Cassini's tour of the Saturn
system, during which the spacecraft is orbiting Saturn very close
to the plane of the rings. The orbit began with a lengthy set of observations
on Iapetus. Later, there was a targeted flyby of
Rhea followed by backlit views of Enceladus' south
polar plumes. There were four "mutual event"
animations captured: Enceladus/Calypso, Epimetheus/Janus, Tethys/Enceladus,
and Rhea/Dione. The rev ended with many days studying
the polarization properties of Saturn's atmosphere.
Rev 17 was part of the Icy Satellites and
Magnetotail phase of Cassini's tour of the Saturn
system, during which the spacecraft is orbiting Saturn very close
to the plane of the rings. The orbit included the T8
targeted flyby of Titan, followed by a Voyager-class
view of Pandora and Prometheus. There was a particularly pretty set
of nearly back-lit views of various moons with the F
ring ansa. After that, Cassini spent many days performing photopolarimetry
of Saturn and high-phase spectrophotometry of all
of the large icy moons. The orbit ended with a lengthy set of observations
on Iapetus, which continued into rev
18.
Data from previous revs will be added slowly but steadily. To see data
from revs 15 and before, you can visit the earlier
version of this website,
which will eventually be supplanted.
|
Rev 20
Rev
19 
Rev
18
Rev
17
[ what is this? ]