Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

Last week, planetary astronomers Anne Verbiscer, Michael Skrutskie, and Doug Hamilton published a paper in Nature succinctly titled

John Smith

Each Titan flyby is not a fork in the road, but rather a Los Angeles style cloverleaf in terms of the dizzying number of possible destinations. So how did our current and future plans for the path of the Cassini spacecraft come to be? That's the question Dave Seal put to me since that's my job -- I am a tour designer.

David Seal

Saturn is rapidly approaching equinox, where the Sun passes through the ring plane (south-to-north, i.e. the northern vernal equinox), and its ring system (i.e. its great now-gloomy poorly-lit circles of large blocks of water ice) is starting to show some really interesting behavior.

David Seal

David Seal muses on his time as the mission planner for Cassini, and the history behind its name, and astronomy in Rome.

Emily Lakdawalla

The trans-Neptunian object formerly known as 2005 FY9 now has a name:

Emily Lakdawalla

I thought that today's image release from the Cassini imaging team was exceptionally pretty.

Emily Lakdawalla

Antares dims and brightens as it passes behind the rings as seen from Cassini in this animation.

Emily Lakdawalla

Since late January Cassini has been acquiring several sets of images that show all of Saturn's globe and ring system at once from perspectives well above and below the ring plane.

Emily Lakdawalla

OK, I had planned to confine my posts this week to Rosetta and New Horizons, but I could not let these images sit on my computer until next week.

Emily Lakdawalla

I wrote recently about a set of images of Saturn acquired by Cassini from a unique vantage point, well above the planet, looking down on the rings. Someone has taken up the challenge of assembling the 36 different images into a single mosaic, in color, and it is as lovely as I'd hoped.

Emily Lakdawalla

Another recent, cool set of images that came down from Cassini was a series taken last week as the spacecraft crossed the ring plane.

Emily Lakdawalla

Over the weekend, Cassini acquired a set of images that will (I am assuming) eventually be used to produce a glorious portrait of the ringed planet from a point of view that's never been seen before.

Emily Lakdawalla

Ever since I first read about the plans for Cassini's tour of the Saturn system I've been looking forward to the current phase of the mission.

Emily Lakdawalla

Over time, Cassini's orbit apoapsis—the point on the orbit that is farthest from Saturn—has been shifting slowly toward Saturn's night side. Lately, this point of view has resulted in some truly lovely photos of the planet.

Emily Lakdawalla

Another thing I've been trying to catch up on is the daily imaging activities of Cassini, but that, too, has been tough because Cassini has been taking so dang many pictures!

Emily Lakdawalla

It's been a while since I posted some Cassini pictures here just because they were pretty.

Emily Lakdawalla

Emily tackles this morning's ESA press conference about Huygens.

Emily Lakdawalla

I just noticed this picture on the Cassini raw images website. I love these

Emily Lakdawalla

Cassini is already on its way in to a close, 500-kilometer encounter with Dione -- it's less than four hours away now, at 17:52 UTC.

Emily Lakdawalla

I monitor the Cassini website to keep my eye out for cool pictures, and it's usually relatively easy to figure out what the spacecraft is looking at (rings, moon, Saturn, whatever). Sometimes, though, the images can be very confusing.