Cassini Sees Saturn and Moons in Holiday Dress (warning big pics)

[n2doc]

The characteristic hexagonal shape of Saturn's northern jet stream, somewhat yellow here, is visible. At the pole lies a Saturnian version of a high-speed hurricane, eye and all.

This holiday season, feast your eyes on images of Saturn and two of its most fascinating moons, Titan and Enceladus, in a care package from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. All three bodies are dressed and dazzling in this special package assembled by Cassini's imaging team.

The new images are available online at: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov, http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://ciclops.org .

"During this, our 10th holiday season at Saturn, we hope that these images from Cassini remind everyone the world over of the significance of our discoveries in exploring such a remote and beautiful planetary system," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader, based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo. "Happy holidays from all of us on Cassini."

Two views of Enceladus are included in the package and highlight the many fissures, fractures and ridges that decorate the icy moon's surface. Enceladus is a white, glittering snowball of a moon, now famous for the nearly 100 geysers that are spread across its south polar region and spout tiny icy particles into space. Most of these particles fall back to the surface as snow. Some small fraction escapes the gravity of Enceladus and makes its way into orbit around Saturn, forming the planet's extensive and diffuse E ring. Because scientists believe these geysers are directly connected to a subsurface, salty, organic-rich, liquid-water reservoir, Enceladus is home to one of the most accessible extraterrestrial habitable zones in the solar system.

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http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/newsreleases/newsrelease20131223/

[rdharma]

1. Amazing! nt

[byronius]

2. For some reason, these views gave me a strange vision.

Space and rotating bodies, and how incredibly vast and empty it all is. The size of it all.

Wow.

[Moonwalk]

3. Saturn for Saturnalia! How apt! Thank you for posting these.

Awesome holiday gift.

[cntrygrl]

4. Absolutely beautiful. Thanks!

[MrScorpio]

5. Here's a fact...

[Warren DeMontague]

7. Thankfully, Star Person Incarnate Fran stopped it, along with the moon bombing.

Lesson: Don't underestimate the bullshit-buying capacity of certain odd corners of this place. For realz.

[Warren DeMontague]

6. Cassini has taken some of the most amazing photos in the history of Humanity, IMHO.

Absolutely stunning.

[opiate69]

8. Without a doubt…

And damn, I hope they can get a probe onto Titan, which can withstand the conditions there, with a really good camera in my lifetime… I sooo want to see some of the vistas in the lakes/oceans region there.