View allAll Photos Tagged planetary
Planetary Outpost’s corridor is a hive of activity. It’s through which the crew can move from one room to another, where the life support system B.R.E.A.T.H.E. is located [Biospheric Reclamation Environmental Aeration Temperature & Humidity Ecosystem], and how the crew can get in and out of the base through one of the three airlocks.
This view shows the unlit face of Saturn's rings, visible via scattered and transmitted light. In these views, dark regions represent gaps and areas of higher particle densities, while brighter regions are filled with less dense concentrations of ring particles.
The dim right side of the image contains nearly the entire C ring. The brighter region in the middle is the inner B ring, while the darkest part represents the dense outer B Ring. The Cassini Division and the innermost part of the A ring are at the upper-left.
Saturn's shadow carves a dark triangle out of the lower right corner of this image.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on June 8, 2005, at a distance of approximately 433,000 kilometers (269,000 miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 22 kilometers (14 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit saturn.jpl.nasa.gov . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at ciclops.org .
credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Explore@NASAGoddard celebrates the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. All areas of Goddard’s research – Earth science, heliophysics, planetary science, astrophysics, and engineering and technology – will be presented, as each discipline plays a critical part in NASA's ongoing journey to reach new heights.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/Jay Friedlander
This stunning Cassini image shows that Saturn's atmosphere is an active
and dynamic place, full of storms and powerful winds. This view is of the
planet's southern hemisphere and shows dark storms ringed by bright
clouds. The line along the limb of the planet is an artifact of the
contrast-enhancement used to bring out features in the atmosphere.
The white churning clouds are at a latitude where winds blow to the west
-- one of the few such places on Saturn. This latitude has been active
since the beginning of 2004 and has been informally named "Storm Alley"
by Cassini imaging scientists.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on
Sept. 19, 2004, at a distance of 8.3 million kilometers (5.2 million
miles) from Saturn through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared
light centered at 750 nanometers. The image scale is 49 kilometers (30
miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the
European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space
Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras,
were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based
at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit,
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/ and the Cassini imaging team home page,
credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Explore@NASAGoddard celebrates the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. All areas of Goddard’s research – Earth science, heliophysics, planetary science, astrophysics, and engineering and technology – will be presented, as each discipline plays a critical part in NASA's ongoing journey to reach new heights.
Credit: NASA/Goddard/Jay Friedlander
As Saturn's equinox continues to approach, the moon Pan casts a slightly
longer shadow on the A ring.
See PIA11652 to see an earlier image of a shorter shadow cast by Pan (28
kilometers, or 17 miles across). The novel illumination geometry created
as Saturn approaches its August 2009 equinox allows moons orbiting in or
near the plane of Saturn's equatorial rings to cast shadows onto the
rings. These scenes are possible only during the few months before and
after Saturn's equinox, which occurs only once in about 15 Earth years. To
learn more about this special time and to see movies of moons' shadows
moving across the rings, see PIA11651 and PIA11660.
Three stars are visible through the rings.
This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 51
degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the
Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 28, 2009. The view was
acquired at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers (870,000
miles) from Pan and at a Sun-Pan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 80 degrees.
Image scale is 8 kilometers (5 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages
the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The
Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and
assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space
Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team
homepage is at ciclops.org.credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Image Addition Date:
2009-08-03
Buildings 7 & 29. Explore@NASAGoddard celebrates the 25th anniversary of the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope. All areas of Goddard’s research – Earth science, heliophysics, planetary science, astrophysics, and engineering and technology – will be presented, as each discipline plays a critical part in NASA's ongoing journey to reach new heights...Credit: NASA/Goddard/Debora McCallum..NASA image use policy.
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center enables NASA’s mission through four scientific endeavors: Earth Science, Heliophysics, Solar System Exploration, and Astrophysics. Goddard plays a leading role in NASA’s accomplishments by contributing compelling scientific knowledge to advance the Agency’s mission.
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Dramatic edge-on Cassini views of Saturn's E ring, like these side-by-side
images, reveal for the first time a double-banded structure. The structure
is similar to that of Jupiter's gossamer ring and to the bands of dust
found within the solar system's asteroid belt. Scientists believe that the
E ring particles have their origins in the geysers erupting from the south
polar of Enceladus.
The double-banded appearance exists because there are fewer particles
close to the ring plane than 500 to 1,000 kilometers (300 to 600 miles)
above and below. This circumstance can arise if the particles making up
the ring encircle Saturn on inclined orbits with a very restricted range
of inclinations.
This special condition might exist for two reasons. One possibility is
that the particles being jetted out of Enceladus and injected into Saturn
orbit may begin their journey around Saturn with a certain velocity, and
consequently a restricted range of inclinations, with respect to the ring
plane. Another is that the particles may begin with a large range of
inclinations, but those orbiting very close to the ring plane get
gravitationally scattered and removed from that region by the passage of
Enceladus.
Scientists will continue to observe the E ring from various angles to
confirm and understand the structure.
Most of the bright specks in the images are background stars, although a
few are cosmic ray hits on the camera's detector.
The two images were taken five hours apart on Dec. 1, 2005, when Cassini
was approximately 1.9 million kilometers (1.2 million miles) from Saturn.
The image scale on the sky at the distance of Saturn is about 220
kilometers (137 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages
the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The
Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and
assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space
Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging
team homepage is at ciclops.org.
credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
This is an artist's concept of Saturn's rings and major icy moons.
Saturn's rings make up an enormous, complex structure. From edge-to-edge,
the ring system would not even fit in the distance between Earth and the
Moon. The seven main rings are labeled in the order in which they were
discovered. From the planet outward, they are D, C, B, A, F, G and E.
The D ring is very faint and closest to Saturn. The main rings are A, B
and C. The outermost ring, easily seen with Earth-based telescopes, is the
A ring. The Cassini Division is the largest gap in the rings and separates
the B ring from the A ring. Just outside the A ring is the narrow F ring,
shepherded by tiny moons, Pandora and Prometheus. Beyond that are two much
fainter rings named G and E. Saturn's diffuse E ring is the largest
planetary ring in our solar system, extending from Mimas' orbit to Titan's
orbit, about 1 million kilometers (621,370 miles).
The particles in Saturn's rings are composed primarily of water ice and
range in size from microns to tens of meters. The rings show a tremendous
amount of structure on all scales; some of this structure is related to
gravitational interactions with Saturn's many moons, but much of it
remains unexplained. One moonlet, Pan, actually orbits inside the A ring
in a 330-kilometer-wide (200-mile) gap called the Encke Gap. The main
rings (A, B and C) are less than 100 meters (300 feet) thick in most
places, compared to their radial extent of 62,120 kilometers (38,600
miles). The main rings are much younger than the age of the solar system,
perhaps only a few hundred million years old. They may have formed from
the breakup of one of Saturn's moons or from a comet or meteor that was
torn apart by Saturn's gravity.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages
the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The
Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
www.nasa.gov/cassini and saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
credit: NASA/JPL
Images taken during the Cassini spacecraft's orbital insertion on June 30
show definite compositional variation within the rings.
This image shows, from left to right, the outer portion of the C ring and
inner portion of the B ring. The B ring begins a little more than halfway
across the image. The general pattern is from "dirty" particles indicated
by red to cleaner ice particles shown in turquoise in the outer parts of
the rings.
The ring system begins from the inside out with the D, C, B and A rings
followed by the F, G and E rings.
This image was taken with the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph instrument,
which is capable of resolving the rings to show features up to 97
kilometers (60 miles) across, roughly 100 times the resolution of
ultraviolet data obtained by the Voyager 2 spacecraft.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages
the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science,
Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and
assembled at JPL. The Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph was built at, and
the team is based at the University of Colorado, Boulder, Colo.
For more information, about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit,
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/ and the Ultraviolet
Imaging Spectrograph team home page, lasp.colorado.edu/cassini/.
credit: NASA/JPL/University of Colorado
Never-before-seen looming vertical structures created by the tiny moon
Daphnis cast long shadows across the rings in this startling image taken
as Saturn approaches its mid-August 2009 equinox.
Daphnis, 8 kilometers ( 5 miles) across, occupies an inclined orbit within
the 42-kilometer (26-mile) wide Keeler Gap in Saturn's outer A ring.
Recent analyses by imaging scientists published in the Astronomical
Journal illustrate how the moon's gravitational pull perturbs the orbits
of the particles forming the gap's edge and sculpts the edge into waves
having both horizontal and vertical components.
Measurements of the shadows in this and other images indicate that the
vertical structures range between one-half to 1.5 kilometers tall (about
one-third to one mile), making them as much as 150 times as high as the
ring is thick. The main A, B and C rings are only about 10 meters (about
30 feet) thick. Daphnis itself can be seen casting a shadow onto the
nearby ring.
In figure 1, a second version of the image that has been magnified to four
times its original size and cropped is also shown.
This image of shadows on the rings and others like it (see PIA11656 and PIA11655)
are only possible around the time of Saturn's equinox which occurs every
half-Saturn-year (equivalent to about 15 Earth years). The illumination
geometry that accompanies equinox lowers the sun's angle to the ringplane
and causes out-of-plane structures to cast long shadows across the rings.
This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 57 degrees
below the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini
spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 24, 2009. The view was acquired at a
distance of approximately 826,000 kilometers (513,000 miles) from Daphnis
and at a Sun-Daphnis-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 121 degrees. Image
scale is 5 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages
the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The
Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and
assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space
Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team
homepage is at ciclops.org.credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Image Addition Date:
2009-06-11
Update: Free instructions for the model are now available on Rebrickable, see: rebrickable.com/mocs/MOC-178983/T.Brick/planetary-outpost...
This small planetary outpost provides a temporary home for scientists researching the local flora and fauna.
Its organic shapes blend in with the surroundings. The base has a kitchen, a sitting area, a bed, a small bathroom, communication equipment and solar panels on the roof, as well as a walled garden outside. Many plants and perhaps also animals are at home in and around the base.
It's my entry for the LEGO "Exploring the Cosmos" challenge. Winner models will be transformed into official reward sets! See here for details and more images: ideas.lego.com/challenges/7c37425a-7cc4-4188-b3bf-a433163...
Image by Johan Moolman
Unlike probably most of you I never previously appreciated this patch to be so "busy"? (With even more non-NGC/ Messier open clusters not apparent in this image). Always tended to be fixated on M46 and the foreground planetary...
Three portraits of Jupiter shine in these photographs above Brighton Park , Seattle. I used a prime lens of 50mm, f/1.8, film version. This translate to digital as a 75mm, f/2.8 portrait lens, because the Rebel sensor is smaller than 35mm. This is one of the few times I didn't use a tripod. It is hand-held, steadied by the garage door.
(If you have time, check out the 'About' page. It is a mini-autobiography about events in my life and various cameras I have used, which are considerable). It is titled 'I Am a 7-year-old Juvenile Delinquent Hillbilly from the Wrong Side of the Tracks' (literally). My grandfather hired a steam shovel and dug our property out of the side of a hill. Below our house was a gully, a creek and a railroad track by the Burlington Northern Railroad Company. We accessed the gully by a narrow trail, little more than an animal path, from the back of the yard. The path carried us over a cliff and down to the bottom, where someone had made a rope swing. It was our private playground that many kids from the neighborhood played there.
The ancestor of my grandfather, Reese Burk, was a Scottish warrior and in the 1740's the King sent him to war in Ireland. He was so successful that the King awarded him a land grants in Ireland AND a castle. That ancestor had three sons. The oldest son inherited the land and castle. The two younger sons joined the British Navy as Lieutenants and sent to the American colonies to quell the rebellion that had started over the Boston Tea Party in 1775. Well, they found that the rebels had a good cause, so they deserted the Navy and joined the rebels. That is why my mother, Hazel Burk Williams, was a member of the D.A.R. (Daughters of the American Revolution)!!!
One of my earliest photo feats was in 1972. Presidential candidate George McGovern was giving a speech outside an Episcopal church in Pasadena before he had Secret Service protection. I have a close-up photo of McGovern and a little girl clapping on the stage. The Pasadena City Hall is in the background. The photograph is by a Contax III-a 35mm rangefinder made in East Germany. It is a professional camera similar to the Leica. Here is the link:
www.flickr.com/photos/starmanmike/12471644885/in/album-72...
Bright undulations disturb a faint ringlet drifting through the center of
the Encke Gap. This ring structure shares the orbit of the moon Pan.
A second, fainter ringlet is visible below the central ringlet.
This view looks toward the lit side of the rings from about 44 degrees
below the ringplane.
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on Dec. 14, 2006 at a distance of approximately
462,000 kilometers (287,000 miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 2
kilometers (2 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages
the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The
Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and
assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space
Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team
homepage is at ciclops.org.
credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Cassini imaging scientists used views like this one to help them identify
the source locations for individual jets spurting ice particles, water
vapor and trace organic compounds from the surface of Saturn's moon
Enceladus.
Their study -- published in the Oct. 11, 2007, issue of the journal
Nature -- identifies eight source locations, all on the prominent
tiger stripe fractures, or sulci, in the moon's south polar region. Some
of the sources occur in regions not yet observed by Cassini's composite
infrared spectrometer, and the researchers predict that future Cassini
observations of those locations will find elevated temperatures.
This false-color view was created by combining three clear filter images
taken at nearly the same time as PIA07759. This image product was then
specially processed to enhance the individual jets that compose the plume.
(PIA07759 was instead processed to reveal subtleties in the brightness of
the overall plume that comprises the jets.) Some artifacts due to the
processing are present in the image. The final product was colored as blue
for dramatic effect.
The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera
on Nov. 27, 2005 at a distance of approximately 148,000 kilometers (92,000
miles) from Enceladus and at a sun-Enceladus-spacecraft, or phase, angle
of 161 degrees. Scale in the original images is about 880 meters (0.5
mile) per pixel. This view has been magnified by a factor of two from the
original images.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages
the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The
Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and
assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space
Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
The Cassini imaging team homepage is at ciclops.org.
credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
This is Neptune, Uranus and Venus to scale from three imaging sessions during the same week in September 2016. Neptune and Uranus were taken in luminance and brighter Venus in infrared. All three appear featureless, in Neptune's and Uranus's case this is due to distance and the need for perfect seeing to capture any detail. In Venus's case infrared or luminance do not reveal detail. I hope in due course to image Venus using a narrow UV band which might allow some detail to be captured.
Peter
Equipment used:
ZWOASI174MM CMOS camera, 5x PowerMate, 12inch f/10 SCT, EQ8 mount.
I met Ben while waiting for a taxi in Seattle. He and a group of colleagues were setting up on along the sides of the streets to recruit sponsors for Child Fund International.
Ben is no mere humanitarian, environmentalist, or animal conservationist. He dreams of changing the world in its entirety. He spends much of his free time walking the streets of Seattle raising money -- and hope -- for children around the world, and plans to take extraordinary measures to protect the environment and wildlife that makes our planet the only life-filled greenhouse in the galaxy.
He described to me his desire to live with only the bare necessities of life, and set up a solar-powered photo lab in the middle of a forest. There he could be immersed in, and capture, the gorgeous environments that flourish around us when unimpeded by human waste. Ben is exactly the type of person I want roaming the streets (or forests) of the world, and I'm so glad I had the chance to meet him.
He's not an humanitarian, environmentalist or animal conservationist; I think of him as a planetary ambassador.
---
Our Daily Challenge - "Reflection"
Ben is a reflection of my own ideals, and those that I'd like to live up to.
A new session of Pangaea geology field training moved to Lofoten, Norway, to scout for new traverses for the Pangaea analogue complement.
The team, consisting of planetary geologists and training experts, is preparing space farers for lunar exploration.
Lofoten shares many geological features with lunar highlands, such as the Apollo 16 landing site, making it a perfect site to train astronauts on lunar geology.
Pangaea instructors Matteo Massironi , Riccardo Pozzobon, and Fransceco Sauro, as well as petrology professor and local expert KÃ¥re Kullerud are guiding ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer through interesting geological sites in the Nusfjord, an area containing primitive crust rock formations, including anorthosites, which are known to be typical lunar highland rocks.
The Pangaea course is designed to provide European astronauts with introductory and practical knowledge of Earth and planetary geology to prepare them to become effective partners of planetary scientists and engineers in designing the next exploration missions.
The course also aims to give astronauts a solid knowledge in the geology of the Solar System from leading European scientists.
Credits: ESA–S. Sechi
Suspended Animation Classic #623 First published December 3, 2000 (#49) (Dates are approximate)
Planetary By Mark Allen
How does one describe a comic book like Planetary? A mix of sci-fi, James Bondish intrigue, a dash of creature feature, and just a smidgen of superhero action is a good start. But it's just a start. This book has to be experienced in order to be truly appreciated.
Elijah Snow is one hundred years old (though he only looks about 40) and has seen a great deal of our world's "secret history" unfold. For that reason, he is sought out by an organization called Planetary (circa issue #1), which is dedicated to uncovering that history.
Writer Warren Ellis does a great job of making the characters (specifically Elijah Snow) "fit" whatever storyline or background he may throw at readers. And, as mentioned above, that's quite a feat, as there are many different ingredients to this delicacy of sequential art. Snow and his teammates, Jakita Wagner and "The Drummer," have been on cases involving a W.W.II quantum computer built by a secret society of superhumans, a literal monster island, the vengeful ghost of a Chinese cop, giant ants, super aliens, and some things that are better read than explained.
Through it all, the characters remain fresh and entertaining, never lost in what is happening around them. Most intriguing is the character of Elijah Snow, who, through flashback stories, has already been shown interacting with the likes of Sherlock Holmes, the Invisible Man, and the lord of vampires himself, Dracula.
The artist for the series is John Cassaday, who does a marvelous job of creating the perfect mood for the stories with his attention to detail, i.e. shading and texture. He also has a flair for characterization; faces and bodies are expressive without being "over the top."
A collection of the first six issues of Planetary has been published, and can be acquired through comic stores (call 1-888-comicbook for the one nearest you), some bookstores, or by logging on to www.wildstorm.com, and clicking on "backlist."
Planetary, published by Wildstorm Productions, 32 pages, $2.50.
A new session of Pangaea geology field training moved to Lofoten, Norway, to scout for new traverses for the Pangaea analogue complement.
The team, consisting of planetary geologists and training experts, is preparing space farers for lunar exploration.
Lofoten shares many geological features with lunar highlands, such as the Apollo 16 landing site, making it a perfect site to train astronauts on lunar geology.
Pangaea instructors Matteo Massironi , Riccardo Pozzobon, and Fransceco Sauro, as well as petrology professor and local expert KÃ¥re Kullerud are guiding ESA astronaut Matthias Maurer through interesting geological sites in the Nusfjord, an area containing primitive crust rock formations, including anorthosites, which are known to be typical lunar highland rocks.
The Pangaea course is designed to provide European astronauts with introductory and practical knowledge of Earth and planetary geology to prepare them to become effective partners of planetary scientists and engineers in designing the next exploration missions.
The course also aims to give astronauts a solid knowledge in the geology of the Solar System from leading European scientists.
Credits: ESA–S. Sechi
Saturn's moon Prometheus casts a long shadow across the A ring in the middle-right side of this Cassini spacecraft image taken shortly before the planet's August 2009 equinox.Prometheus (86 kilometers, or 53 miles across) orbits in the Roche Division between the thin F ring and the A ring. The novel illumination geometry created around the time of Saturn's August 2009 equinox allows out-of-plane structures and moons orbiting in or near the plane of Saturn's equatorial rings to cast shadows onto the rings. These scenes are possible only during the few months before and after Saturn's equinox, which occurs only once in about 15 Earth years. To learn more about this special time and to see movies of moons' shadows moving across the rings, see PIA11651 and PIA11660.This view looks toward the northern, unilluminated side of the rings from about 31 degrees above the ringplane. Many stars are visible. The rings and stars have been brightened by a factor six relative to Prometheus to enhance visibility.The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 29, 2009. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometers (870,000 miles) from Prometheus and at a sun-Prometheus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 93 degrees. Image scale is 9 kilometers (6 miles) per pixel.The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at ciclops.org.credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Image Addition Date:
2010-08-20
The varying temperatures of Saturn's rings are depicted here in this
false-color image from the Cassini spacecraft.
This image represents the most detailed look to date at the temperature
of Saturn's rings. The image was made from data taken by Cassini's
composite infrared spectrometer instrument.
Red represents temperatures of about 110 Kelvin (-261 degrees Fahrenheit),
and blue 70 Kelvin (-333 degrees Fahrenheit). Green is equivalent to 90
Kelvin (-298 degrees Fahrenheit). Water freezes at 273 Kelvin (32 degrees
Fahrenheit). The spatial resolution of the ring portion of the image is
200 kilometers (124 miles).
The data show that the opaque region of the rings, like the outer A ring
(on the far right) and the middle B ring, are cooler, while more
transparent sections, like the Cassini Division (in red just inside the
A ring) or the inner C ring (shown in yellow and red), are relatively
warmer.
The temperature data were taken on July 1, 2004, of the unlit side of the
rings. In order to show the full breadth of the rings, a strip of
temperature data was mapped onto a picture of the lit side of the rings
taken with the Cassini narrow angle camera on May 11, 2004, a little over
a month before Saturn orbit insertion. Cassini is too close to the planet
and hence no pictures of the unlit side of the rings are available, so
the temperature data were mapped onto a picture of the lit side of rings.
Saturn is overexposed and pure white in this picture. Saturn's moon
Enceladus is visible below the rings, toward the center
The original picture and caption are available at PIA05410.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the
European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science and
Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed,
developed and assembled at JPL. The Composite Infrared Spectrometer team
is based at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit
saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the instrument
team's home page, cirs.gsfc.nasa.gov/ .
credit: NASA/JPL/GSFC/Ames
A familiar sight in any classroom that has definitely changed over time! The Planetary Pencil Pointer was made by the A.B. Dick Company of Chicago and patented in 1896. While other pencil sharpeners had been invented prior to the A.B. Dick patent, these were mostly handheld designs which increased the likelihood of the pencil lead breaking during the sharpening process. The Planetary Pencil Pointer solved this problem by gripping the pencil itself while the hand crank sharpened the pencil to a point. The A.B. Dick Company was also well known for their collaboration with Thomas Edison in the invention of the Mimeograph which allowed for they quick and easy copying of text through the use of wax stencils.
From just outside the faint edge of Saturn's F ring, the moon Pandora
keeps watch over her fine-grained flock. The outer flanks of the F ring
region are populated by ice particles approaching the size of the
particles comprising smoke. As a shepherd moon, Pandora helps her cohort
Prometheus confine and shape the main F ring. Pandora is 84 kilometers
(52 miles) across.
Prometheus is 102 kilometers (63 miles) wide and orbits interior to the F
ring.
The small knot seen attached to the core is one of several that Cassini
scientists are eyeing as they attempt to distinguish embedded moons from
transient clumps of material (see PIA07716).
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on
Aug. 2, 2005, using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light
centered at 930 nanometers at a distance of approximately 610,000
kilometers (379,000 miles) from Pandora and at a Sun-Pandora-spacecraft,
or phase, angle of 146 degrees. Image scale is 4 kilometers (2 miles) per
pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages
the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The
Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
For additional images visit the Cassini imaging team homepage ciclops.org.
credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute