Saturn on The Big Picture
One of my favorite places on the internet is a photo blog hosted by the Boston Globe called The Big Picture. Each post is a set of related images, usually something timely, often high resolution, and always breathtaking. Yesterday the collection was a series of images from Cassini, the probe we currently have orbiting Saturn. As always, the pictures are mind blowing.
Here’s one example (click for the big version on The Big Picture):
The caption:
Jagged looking shadows stretch away from vertical structures of ring material created by the moon Daphnis, a bright dot (8 km, or 5 mi across) casting a thin shadow just to the left of the center of the image. The moon has an inclined orbit, and its gravitational pull perturbs the orbits of the particles of the A ring forming the Keeler Gap’s edge and sculpting the edge into waves having both horizontal (radial) and out-of-plane components. These scenes are possible only during the few months before and after Saturn’s equinox, which occurs only once in about 15 Earth years. This image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 26, 2009, at a distance of approximately 823,000 km (511,000 mi) from Daphnis.
Here’s another one showing gravitational influences of two of the moons (click to see bigger and as an animated GIF on The Big Picture):
This animated series of images of Saturn’s F Ring was acquired by Cassini on June 10, 2009. Shepherd moons Prometheus (inner) and Pandora (outer) pass by, alternately smoothing and disturbing the particles that make up the ring. Kinks, knots, wakes and disturbances are apparent in the thin ring as it rotates.
