Saturn - NASA Cassini Mission

Crowned Queen of the Solar System.
One of the most succesful robotic missions to gas giants is about to end so thought to start this thread where I would like to collect best shots made by Cassini also those which are about to arrive from the spacecraft's Grand Finale.

In late 2016, the Cassini spacecraft will begin a daring set of orbits called the Grand Finale, which will be in some ways like a whole new mission. The spacecraft will repeatedly climb high above Saturn’s poles, flying just outside its narrow F ring 20 times. After a last targeted Titan flyby, the spacecraft will then dive between Saturn’s uppermost atmosphere and its innermost ring 22 times. As Cassini plunges past Saturn, the spacecraft will collect rich and valuable information far beyond the mission’s original plan, including measuring Saturn’s gravitational and magnetic fields, determining ring mass, sampling the atmosphere and ionosphere, and making the last views of Enceladus. - nasa.gov

Read the full Grand Finale fact sheet (3.4 MB PDF)

Below a quick overview through some older/newer favorites of mine, in reply posts all of yours welcomed!

Enchanting Saturn / Oct. 22, 2008


Highlighting Plumes / Oct. 6, 2010


Saturn's Northern Storm / Nov. 18, 2011


Titan's south polar vortex / 2012


and the same feature, now call it Titan's small, bright “button” / 2013


The Rose / April 29, 2013


Peering Through Titan's Haze / Dec. 5, 2015


Bull's-eye Moons / Dec. 14, 2015


Basking in Light - The Northern Hexagon / Dec. 28, 2016


Click the links above to view full images and to read related articles!

sorry could not stand to ignore this so clever joke by some funny faces at nasa...(:


saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

(Two days before I have started this thread I posted all these below to my APOD collection, now I move it here being a special product of Cassini mission. No repost, it have been deleted from APOD thread. Sorry for the mess! - syz)

Daphnis the Wavemaker
Image Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA

Plunging close to the outer edges of Saturn's rings, on January 16 the Cassini spacecraft captured this closest yet view of Daphnis. About 8 kilometers across and orbiting within the bright ring system's Keeler gap, the small moon is making waves. The 42-kilometer wide outer gap is foreshortened in the image by Cassini's viewing angle. Raised by the influenced of the small moon's weak gravity as it crosses the frame from left to right, the waves are formed in the ring material at the edge of the gap. A faint wave-like trace of ring material is just visible trailing close behind Daphnis. Remarkable details on Daphnis can also be seen, including a narrow ridge around its equator, likely an accumulation of particles from the ring.

All credit and more from source: apod.nasa.gov

It made me remember of a great contemporary sci-fi novel I have read not long ago, where characters had the opportunity -amongst others- to try Ring Surf, a 'space-sport' played "on" ring waves of gas giant Saturn.
"2312 is a really good read with great, unique ideas embedded into a texture of genuine turns and solvings" - Syzygy Mirror (:

... and ever until no complete explanation. Sorry, I just can not get it out of my head.

Saturn in Infrared from Cassini

Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, SSI; Processing: Maksim Kakitsev

Many details of Saturn appear clearly in infrared light. Bands of clouds show great structure, including long stretching storms. Also quite striking in infrared is the unusual hexagonal cloud pattern surrounding Saturn's North Pole. Each side of the dark hexagon spans roughly the width of our Earth. The hexagon's existence was not predicted, and its origin and likely stability remains a topic of research. Saturn's famous rings circle the planet and cast shadows below the equator. The featured image was taken by the robotic Cassini spacecraft in 2014 in several infrared colors -- but only processed recently. In September, Cassini's mission will be brought to a dramatic conclusion as the spacecraft will be directed to dive into ringed giant.

more from source: apod170403.nasa.gov

NASA image feature from April 27, 2017:

Cassini Captures Closest Images of Saturn's Atmosphere



This unprocessed image shows features in Saturn's atmosphere from closer than ever before. The view was captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft during its first Grand Finale dive past the planet on April 26, 2017.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.

Last Updated: April 28, 2017
Editor: Brian Dunbar

source: nasa.gov

Density Waves in Saturn's Rings from Cassini

Image Credit & License: NASA/JPL/SSI; Digital Composite : Emily Lakdawalla (Planetary Society)

What causes the patterns in Saturn's rings? The Cassini spacecraft, soon ending its 13 years orbiting Saturn, has sent back another spectacular image of Saturn's immense ring system in unprecedented detail. The physical cause for some of Saturn's ring structures is not always understood. The cause for the beautifully geometric type of ring structure shown here in ring of Saturn, however, is surely a density wave. A small moon systematically perturbing the orbits of ring particles circling Saturn at slightly different distances causes such a density wave bunching. Also visible on the lower right of the image is a bending wave, a vertical wave in ring particles also caused by the gravity of a nearby moon. Cassini's final orbits are allowing a series of novel scientific measurements and images of the Solar System's most grand ring system.

more from source: apod.nasa.gov

clouds? -giant stream of cocoa in vast ocean of milk!

Clouds on Saturn take on the appearance of strokes from a cosmic brush thanks to the wavy way that fluids interact in Saturn's atmosphere.

Neighboring bands of clouds move at different speeds and directions depending on their latitudes. This generates turbulence where bands meet and leads to the wavy structure along the interfaces. Saturn’s upper atmosphere generates the faint haze seen along the limb of the planet in this image.

This false color view is centered on 46 degrees north latitude on Saturn. The images were taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on May 18, 2017 using a combination of spectral filters which preferentially admit wavelengths of near-infrared light. The image filter centered at 727 nanometers was used for red in this image; the filter centered at 750 nanometers was used for blue. (The green color channel was simulated using an average of the two filters.)

The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 750,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is about 4 miles (7 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and www.nasa.gov/cassini . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Last Updated: Aug. 14, 2017
Editor: Tony Greicius

source at nasa.gov

Impact Site: Infrared Image

This montage of images, made from data obtained by Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, shows the location on Saturn where the NASA spacecraft entered Saturn's atmosphere on Sept. 15, 2017.

read more: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia21896/impact-site-infrared

Twilight Haze


In this view, individual layers of haze can be distinguished in the upper atmosphere of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. Titan’s atmosphere features a rich and complex chemistry originating from methane and nitrogen and evolving into complex molecules, eventually forming the smog that surrounds the moon.

This natural color image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on March 31, 2005, at a distance of approximately 20,556 miles (33,083 kilometers) from Titan. The view looks toward the north polar region on the moon’s night side. Part of Titan’s sunlit crescent is visible at right.

The Cassini spacecraft ended its mission on Sept. 15, 2017.

The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and www.nasa.gov/cassini. The Cassini imaging team homepage is at ciclops.org.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Last Updated: Jan. 16, 2018
Editor: Tony Greicius

full image and more from source: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia21902/twilight-haze

Contrasting Crescents

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

In this view, Saturn’s icy moon Rhea passes in front of Titan as seen by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Some of the differences between the two large moons are readily apparent. While Rhea is a heavily-cratered, airless world, Titan’s nitrogen-rich atmosphere is even thicker than Earth’s.

This natural color image was taken in visible light with the Cassini narrow-angle camera on Nov. 19, 2009, at a distance of approximately 713,300 miles (1,148,000 kilometers) from Rhea.

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full image and more from source: nasa.gov

amazing and funny instrument by Saturn, Cassini and Matt Russo

Sure, you've seen Saturn's rings -- but have you ever heard them? Well then please take this opportunity to play Saturn's rings like a harp. In the featured sonification, increasing brighter regions of Saturn's central B-ring play as increasingly higher pitched notes. With a computer browser, click anywhere on the image to begin, and pluck consecutive strings by sliding the spacecraft icon's magnetometer boom across the strings. Both manual and automatic modes are possible. The featured natural-color image was taken by the late Cassini spacecraft in 2017 July as it grazed Saturn's rings and took the highest-resolution ring images ever. The reason why the mostly water-ice rings have a tan hue -- instead of white -- is currently a topic of research. Played in minor harmony, a different false-color version of the same image appears where regions with a greater abundance of water ice appears more red.
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more from source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap180424.html

I have tried this interplanetary instrument many ways - otherworldly experience was to listen automatic play by slow tempo!(:

Seeing Titan with Infrared Eyes
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Stéphane Le Mouélic, University of Nantes, Virginia Pasek, University of Arizona

These six infrared images of Saturn's moon Titan represent some of the clearest, most seamless-looking global views of the icy moon's surface produced so far. The views were created using 13 years of data acquired by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) instrument on board NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The images are the result of a focused effort to smoothly combine data from the multitude of different observations VIMS made under a wide variety of lighting and viewing conditions over the course of Cassini's mission.
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Any full color image is comprised of three color channels: red, green and blue. Each of the three color channels combined to create these views was produced using a ratio between the brightness of Titan's surface at two different wavelengths (1.59/1.27 microns [red], 2.03/1.27 microns [green] and 1.27/1.08 microns [blue]). This technique (called a "band-ratio" technique) reduces the prominence of seams, as well as emphasizing subtle spectral variations in the materials on Titan’s surface. For example, the moon's equatorial dune fields appear a consistent brown color here. There are also bluish and purplish areas that may have different compositions from the other bright areas, and may be enriched in water ice.
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It is quite clear from this unique set of images that Titan has a complex surface, sporting myriad geologic features and compositional units. The VIMS instrument has paved the way for future infrared instruments that could image Titan at much higher resolution, revealing features that were not detectable by any of Cassini’s instruments.
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Last Updated: July 19, 2018
Editor: Tony Greicius

more from source: www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/seeing-titan-with-infrared-eyes