More pics from Cassini, and a video

[n2doc]

Cassini did a close flyby of Titan yesterday and the data is starting to come out. NASA has done a video with some of the images in it.

The video (flash) is here:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/videos/cassini/cassini20061025/
The images and animations are pretty interesting, even if the narration is the typical silly "get the public excitied" NASA stuff....

Also Cassini has been busy looking at the smaller moons and the ring systems:

The Cassini spacecraft provides this dramatic portrait of Janus against the cloud-streaked backdrop of Saturn.
Like many small bodies in the solar system, Janus (181 kilometers, or 113 miles across) is potato-shaped with many craters, and the moon has a surface that looks as though it has been smoothed by some process. Like Pandora (see Pandora's Color Close-up) and Telesto (see A Closer Look at Telesto), Janus may be covered with a mantle of fine dust-sized, icy material.


Tiny Moons, Big Effects
October 25, 2006

The two prominent dark gaps in Saturn's A ring contain small embedded moons and a host of other intriguing features.
Here, three unique ringlets are visible in the Encke gap (325 kilometers, or 200 miles wide). The innermost ringlet (topmost here) is faint but continuous. The center ringlet brightens substantially toward upper left and displays a few slight kinks. This ringlet is coincident with the orbit of Pan (26 kilometers, or 16 miles across). The outermost ringlet is discontinuous, with two bright regions visible.

The narrower Keeler gap (42 kilometers, or 26 miles wide) hosts the moon Daphnis (7 kilometers, or 4.3 miles across, not in this image), which raises waves in the gap edges as it orbits Saturn (see Daphnis At Work).

At lower left, faint ringlets flanking the bright F ring core are visible. These features were found by the Cassini spacecraft to be arranged into a spiral arm structure that winds around the planet like a spring. The spiral may be caused by tiny moonlets or clumps of material that have smashed through the F ring core and liberated material.



Shearing Core
October 24, 2006

This close-up view of the core of Saturn's narrow outlying F ring provides an unprecedented look at the fine scale structure of this highly perturbed ring.
Like F Ring Dynamism, the structure seen here could be further evidence of the gravitational effects of small moons orbiting in the F ring region. The moons could produce the basic structure which then starts to shear -- the inner/lower part of the F ring core orbits Saturn faster than the outer/upper part -- giving rise to the slanted features.

As usual, high res pics and more details can be found here:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm

[FogerRox]

1. very freakin cool, KNR

[whistle]

2. Pretty amazing stuff, hydrocarbon lakes! My gawd, Dick Cheney

...must be having a wet dream.