Waltz Around Saturn With This Beautiful Animation

By jmajor - July 19, 2013 at 2:50 PM UTC | Planetary Science
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In honor of this today's

Wave at Saturn

and

The Day the Earth Smiled

events, celebrating images to be taken of Earth from Saturn, here's a wonderful movie showing highlights from Cassini's exploration of the giant planet, its magnificent rings, and fascinating family of moons.

Assembled by

Fabio Di Donato

in memory of astrophysicist, author and activist Margherita Hack, who passed away

June 29

at the age of 91, this video is an impressive tour of the Saturnian system -- and a truly stunning tribute as well.

"She made me love the stars," Fabio wrote.

This video shows a selection from more than 200,000 pictures taken by the Cassini spacecraft around Saturn's rings in a period between 2005 and 2013. RAW images were processed to PNG thanks to the Vicar-to-PNG procedure provided by

Jessica McKellar

.

The music is Jazz Suite No.2: VI Waltz 2 by Shostakovich, performed by the Armonie Symphony Orchestra.

As always, you can see the latest images and news from the Cassini mission

here

, and find out how your photo is going to be taken from 900 million miles away (and also 60 million miles away from Mercury!)

here

.

Video: Fabio Di Donato. Original images: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI.

P.S.: Want to get a personalized certificate saying you "Waved at Saturn?"

Click here.