The “wow” factor from the Cassini mission never quits. Here’s the latest image, released just today of Saturn, viewed in near-infrared. This image was taken with Cassini’s wide-angle camera on Oct. 23, 2009 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light, centered at 890 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 2.6 million kilometers (1.6 million miles) from Saturn. The large shadow south of the equator is from the moon Tethys (1062 kilometers, 660 miles across). The small shadow near the limb of the planet, north of the equator, is the shadow of the moon Mimas (396 kilometers, 246 miles across). Absolutely stunning.
See below for more Cassini goodness of moons playing peek-a-boo with the rings and each other.
Here, Janus and another moon hide behind Saturn’s rings.
You don’t see this every day: a crescent Enceladus being eclipsed by a crescent Rhea. Gorgeous!
Click on the images to go directly to the Cassini image pages. See more gorgeous shots at CICLOPS
Multiple space agencies are looking to send crewed missions to the Moon's southern polar region…
Last November, NASA's Lucy mission conducted a flyby of the asteroid Dinkinish, one of the…
Steven Hawking famously calculated that black holes should evaporate, converting into particles and energy over…
NASA has given the go-ahead for SpaceX to work out a plan to adapt its…
The JWST is astronomers' best tool for probing exoplanet atmospheres. Its capable instruments can dissect…
First light for the Vera Rubin Observatory (VRO) is quickly approaching and the telescope is…