Jan. 20th, 2006

mmcirvin: (Default)
Gorgeous, dreamlike backlit images:

The ring of Titan's atmosphere seen through the rings of Saturn

Thin Enceladus crescent

Enceladus venting from its south pole, and the overexposed rings (shorter exposure)

There was also a recent flyby of Rhea, not tremendously close but providing the best pictures yet of the "wispy" trailing hemisphere. The similar streaks on Dione were previously revealed to be massive systems of ice cliffs and chasms; these new pictures look to me to indicate the same for Rhea.
mmcirvin: (Default)
The first look at the Stardust aerogel dust collector is promising:
The interstellar dust side of the collector also showed signs of two particles from Wild 2 that impacted with such force that they shot clean through the cometary side of the collector and into the interstellar dust side. [...] Each particle captured by the collector leaves a carrot-shaped tunnel in the collector, at the end of which can be found the particle itself. "It exceeds all expectations" said Donald Brownlee of the University of Washington, Principal Investigator of the Stardust mission, when the cometary side of the collector was revealed. "We can see lots of impacts -- there are big ones, there are small ones." One track, he added, was almost large enough to put a finger through. Overall, he said, "it's a huge success."

Color Rhea

Jan. 20th, 2006 09:38 pm
mmcirvin: (Default)
Here's a false-color image of the "wispy hemisphere" of Rhea that I made from infrared, green-light, ultraviolet and clear-filter images taken during the Cassini flyby on Tuesday:

ice cliffs )

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