by Ann » Sat Nov 02, 2024 6:19 am
When I and my brother were little, we were allowed to put plastic stickers on our bedroom window for Christmas. Most of the stickers were Santas and elves and reindeer and Christmas trees and stuff, but there were also stars, crescent Moons and a Saturn. The Saturn sticker was all white, looking something like this on our window against the dark December night outside:
Of course, our sticker didn't even have the dark lines separating Saturn's disk from its rings. It was all white. I was absolutely floored when I first saw Saturn through a telescope and it looked
just like that!!!!
Today's telescopes, and, in particular, the Cassini probe, have sure revolutionized our knowledge about Saturn! My favorite Saturn image is this one, "Figure 2". Read the NASA caption below!
NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote:
On July 19, 2013, in an event celebrated the world over, NASA's Cassini spacecraft slipped into Saturn's shadow and turned to image the planet, seven of its moons, its inner rings -- and, in the background, our home planet, Earth.
With both Cassini's wide-angle and narrow-angle cameras aimed at Saturn, Cassini was able to capture 323 images in just over four hours. This final mosaic uses 141 of those wide-angle images. Images taken using the red, green and blue spectral filters of the wide-angle camera were combined and mosaicked together to create this natural-color view. A brightened version with contrast and color enhanced (Figure 1), a version with just the planets annotated (Figure 2), and an annotated version (Figure 3) are shown above.
For ease of visibility, Earth, Venus, Mars, Enceladus, Epimetheus and Pandora were all brightened by a factor of eight and a half relative to Saturn.
But that was July 19, 2013. Another backlit image is from September 15, 2017, and it was the swan song from Cassini.
I think there is a problem with the alignment here -
look at that sharp magenta line along the limb of Saturn!
There is a corresponding green line on the other side of Saturn.
Well, good-bye, farewell, Cassini, you did an amazing job!
Click to play embedded YouTube video.
Before I go, I like this "fat crescent Saturn", whose northern hemisphere looks blue. And look at that razor-sharp line of the ring plane!
Ann
When I and my brother were little, we were allowed to put plastic stickers on our bedroom window for Christmas. Most of the stickers were Santas and elves and reindeer and Christmas trees and stuff, but there were also stars, crescent Moons and a Saturn. The Saturn sticker was all white, looking something like this on our window against the dark December night outside:
[img2]https://i.pinimg.com/564x/9c/03/37/9c0337a93dae84368812341bd2fcd822.jpg[/img2]
Of course, our sticker didn't even have the dark lines separating Saturn's disk from its rings. It was all white. I was absolutely floored when I first saw Saturn through a telescope and it looked [b][i][size=110]just like that[/size][/i][/b]!!!! :shock:
Today's telescopes, and, in particular, the Cassini probe, have sure revolutionized our knowledge about Saturn! My favorite Saturn image is this one, "Figure 2". Read the NASA caption below!
[attachment=1]PIA17172_fig2[1].jpg[/attachment]
[quote][url=https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/pia17172-the-day-the-earth-smiled/]NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory[/url] wrote:
On July 19, 2013, in an event celebrated the world over, NASA's Cassini spacecraft slipped into Saturn's shadow and turned to image the planet, seven of its moons, its inner rings -- and, in the background, our home planet, Earth.[/quote]
[quote]With both Cassini's wide-angle and narrow-angle cameras aimed at Saturn, Cassini was able to capture 323 images in just over four hours. This final mosaic uses 141 of those wide-angle images. Images taken using the red, green and blue spectral filters of the wide-angle camera were combined and mosaicked together to create this natural-color view. [b][size=110][color=#0040FF]A brightened version with contrast and color enhanced [/color][/size][/b](Figure 1), a version with just the planets annotated (Figure 2), and an annotated version (Figure 3) are shown above.[/quote]
[quote]For ease of visibility, Earth, Venus, Mars, Enceladus, Epimetheus and Pandora were all brightened by a factor of eight and a half relative to Saturn.[/quote]
But that was July 19, 2013. Another backlit image is from September 15, 2017, and it was the swan song from Cassini.
[float=right][attachment=0]APOD 2 November 2024 detail.png[/attachment][c][size=85][color=#0040FF]I think there is a problem with the alignment here -
look at that sharp magenta line along the limb of Saturn!
There is a corresponding green line on the other side of Saturn.[/color][/size][/c][/float][img3="Saturn at Night.
Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Space Science Institute, Mindaugas Macijauskas"]https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/image/2411/LastRingPortrait_Cassini_1080.jpg[/img3]
[clear][/clear]
Well, good-bye, farewell, Cassini, you did an amazing job!
[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kxjwb5cXTI0[/youtube]
Before I go, I like this "fat crescent Saturn", whose northern hemisphere looks blue. And look at that razor-sharp line of the ring plane! :shock:
[img3="Crescent Saturn. Credit: NASA JPL-Caltech."]https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/5aeb2d61ec4eb71db6368339/1547027547594-L04HI3WQGHQ80HCWKS6R/saturn-crescent.jpg?content-type=image%2Fjpeg[/img3]
Ann