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Other moons
Jan. 16th, 2005 12:32 pmJPL's Cassini raw image archive is still offline to keep people from Slashdotting the site by erroneously looking there for Huygens Probe images. It's a bit unfortunate, since Cassini is supposed to have just made encounters with Mimas, Enceladus and Rhea that, while not terribly close, probably produced better-than-Voyager pictures.
Better images of Mimas and its Death Star crater Herschel would be pretty cool just for aesthetic reasons; unfortunately it looks to me as if Herschel was not sunlit during the encounter, and Cassini was probably badly positioned to get Saturn-light images of it, so don't expect much Death Starage. There's a somewhat better flyby in August. Cassini doesn't get really close to Mimas in its primary mission; I'm hoping they send it there eventually if it lasts longer, and if the ring system is characterized well enough that they think they can risk it.
The Rhea flyby is actually in progress as I write this. From Voyager, Rhea looked like a larger and more subdued version of Dione; it will be interesting to see if its bright wisps are also made of giant tectonic fractures, but that may not happen today because, again, I think Cassini is looking at the wrong side. There's a very close flyby in November and another in 2007.
Finally, Enceladus is of particular scientific interest because it might be geologically active, and seems to share some properties of Europa, with possible liquid water under the surface. Cassini is actually going to make four close flybys of Enceladus starting on the next orbit in February; today's pictures (combined with Voyager 2's pretty good ones) might provide some preview of what's going to be visible. On the other hand, I think the pictures from this flyby are going to be of a thin crescent.
In any event, it'll be interesting to see the raw image archive when it comes back up.
Update: While the raw-image search page isn't there, the actual raw images are apparently still being updated, and this thread on the Bad Astronomy board points out some notable ones. It looks as if some were rather better than I expected (I was looking at relative orientations only at closest approach).
Better images of Mimas and its Death Star crater Herschel would be pretty cool just for aesthetic reasons; unfortunately it looks to me as if Herschel was not sunlit during the encounter, and Cassini was probably badly positioned to get Saturn-light images of it, so don't expect much Death Starage. There's a somewhat better flyby in August. Cassini doesn't get really close to Mimas in its primary mission; I'm hoping they send it there eventually if it lasts longer, and if the ring system is characterized well enough that they think they can risk it.
The Rhea flyby is actually in progress as I write this. From Voyager, Rhea looked like a larger and more subdued version of Dione; it will be interesting to see if its bright wisps are also made of giant tectonic fractures, but that may not happen today because, again, I think Cassini is looking at the wrong side. There's a very close flyby in November and another in 2007.
Finally, Enceladus is of particular scientific interest because it might be geologically active, and seems to share some properties of Europa, with possible liquid water under the surface. Cassini is actually going to make four close flybys of Enceladus starting on the next orbit in February; today's pictures (combined with Voyager 2's pretty good ones) might provide some preview of what's going to be visible. On the other hand, I think the pictures from this flyby are going to be of a thin crescent.
In any event, it'll be interesting to see the raw image archive when it comes back up.
Update: While the raw-image search page isn't there, the actual raw images are apparently still being updated, and this thread on the Bad Astronomy board points out some notable ones. It looks as if some were rather better than I expected (I was looking at relative orientations only at closest approach).