Cassini Spacecraft To Take Picture Of Earth From Nearly 900 Million Miles Away
Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The jointly operated NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens orbiter exploring Saturn is set to take a spectacular image of Earth this afternoon – July 19 – during a solar eclipse of the sixth...
Latest Cassini–Huygens Stories
WASHINGTON, June 18, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft, now exploring Saturn, will take a picture of our home planet from a distance of hundreds of millions of miles on July 19. NASA is inviting the public to help acknowledge the historic interplanetary portrait as it is being taken. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Earth will appear as a small, pale blue dot between the rings of Saturn in the image, which will be part of a mosaic,...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Scientists writing in The Astrophysical Journal say they have found aerosol "snow" on Saturn's moon Titan. The scientists said they confirmed the presence of Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the upper atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon. This study provides an explanation of the origin of the aerosol particles found in the lowest haze layer that blankets Titan's surface. Titan has an atmosphere most resembling that of...
Brett Smith for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Once considered to be an afterthought when it came to Saturn’s moons, scientists now believe Dione likely had an active geological history after analyzing data sent back from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. "A picture is emerging that suggests Dione could be a fossil of the wondrous activity Cassini discovered spraying from Saturn's geyser moon Enceladus or perhaps a weaker copycat Enceladus," said Cassini team leader Bonnie Buratti of...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA scientists are predicting that Saturn's moon Titan is in for some wild weather during its spring and summer seasons. The space agency said it believes that as the seasons change in Titan's northern hemisphere, waves could ripple across the moon's hydrocarbon seas, and hurricanes could start swirling around in these areas. Data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft helped create the models that led to the predictions. "If you think...
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The first global topographical map of Saturn’s moon Titan was created by scientists at the Cassini-Huygens mission. The map, published as part of a paper in the journal Icarus, will give researchers a valuable tool for learning more about one of the most Earth-like and interesting worlds in the solar system. With a radius of approximately 1,600 miles, Titan is Saturn’s largest moon. As the second-largest moon in the Solar System,...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online NASA's Cassini spacecraft has helped shed light on one way the bubble of charged particles around Saturn changes with the planet's seasons. Earth has a magnetosphere like Saturn, and the latest results may help scientists better understand variations in it and the Van Allen radiation belts, which both affect things from space flight safety to satellite and cell phone communications. Researchers wrote in the Journal of Geophysical...
The Sun and our neighboring planet Mars are two destinations that the UK and US will be exploring together in the coming years, following recent agreements for collaboration on three big space projects. During a visit this week to space facilities and companies in the UK, Mason Peck, Chief Technologist at NASA, said, “Cooperation and collaboration are critical to meet increasingly global challenges, and our partnership with the United Kingdom in space exploration and technology...
[ Watch the Video: Mysterious Hurricane at Saturn’s North Pole ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided an incredible view of a monster storm on Saturn with clouds moving as fast as 300 miles per hour. High-resolution pictures and video of the storm gives a unique perspective of a hurricane with an eye measuring about 1,250 miles, which is about 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. NASA said the hurricane is...
WASHINGTON, April 29, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn's north pole. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane's eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of...
WASHINGTON, April 25, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided the first direct evidence of small meteoroids breaking into streams of rubble and crashing into Saturn's rings. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO ) These observations make Saturn's rings the only location besides Earth, the moon, and Jupiter where scientists and amateur astronomers have been able to observe impacts as they occur. Studying the impact rate of...
Latest Cassini–Huygens Reference Libraries
Cassini-Huygens Mission -- The Cassini unmanned space probe is intended to study Saturn and its moons. It was launched on October 15, 1997 and is estimated to enter Saturn's orbit on July 1, 2004. The mission is a joined NASA/ESA project. Cassini's principal objectives are to: -- determine the three-dimensional structure and dynamical behavior of the rings -- determine the composition of the satellite surfaces and the geological history of each object -- determine the nature...
Saturn's moon Titan -- Titan is the planet Saturn's largest moon. It is larger than either of the planets Mercury or Pluto and is the second-largest moon in the solar system after Ganymede (it was originally thought to be slightly larger than Ganymede, but recent observations have shown that its thick atmosphere caused overestimation of its diameter). Titan was discovered on March 25, 1655 by the Dutch astronomer Christian Huygens, making it one of the first non-terrestrial moons to be...
The Planet Saturn -- in astronomy, 6th planet from the sun. Astronomical and Physical Characteristics of Saturn Saturn's orbit lies between those of Jupiter and Uranus; its mean distance from the sun is c.886 million mi (1.43 billion km), almost twice that of Jupiter, and its period of revolution is about 291/2 years. Saturn appears in the sky as a yellow, starlike object of the first magnitude. When viewed through a telescope, it is seen as a golden sphere, crossed by a series of...
