In July we were asked to smile and wave at the planet Saturn - for NASA’s Cassini spacecraft was about to take a picture of Saturn with Earth and (some) other planets in the background. Whether you did or not, I grinned and waved like a mad man that night.
What was special about that day - 19th July 2013 - was another NASA spacecraft, the MESSENGER flying around the planet Mercury also took a photo of the 3rd Rock from the Sun. If you didn’t catch it then, read the post here.
At that time NASA announced the full Saturn mosaic would be released in fall. As we approach the Winter, NASA has released the full mosaic. Here is an annotated picture.
Beautiful, is it not - like a Marble in the Sky! (with apologies to Isaac Asimov).
From the NASA website: With both Cassini's wide-angle and narrow-angle cameras aimed at Saturn, Cassini was able to capture 323 images in just over four hours. This final mosaic uses 141 of those wide-angle images. Images taken using the red, green and blue spectral filters of the wide-angle camera were combined and mosaicked together to create the natural-colour view.
This image spans about 404,880 miles (651,591 kilometres) across. Cassini itself was approximately 746,000 miles (1.2 million kilometres) from Saturn (and 1.44 billion kilometres from Earth) when the images in the mosaic were taken.
Image scale on Saturn is about 45 miles (72 kilometres) per pixel. Image courtesy NASA/JPL and CICLOPS (Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations).
Even though it is a repeat, seeing the image, what strikes me is that Saturn doesn’t look anything like in Flash Gordon adventures.
:-D
What was special about that day - 19th July 2013 - was another NASA spacecraft, the MESSENGER flying around the planet Mercury also took a photo of the 3rd Rock from the Sun. If you didn’t catch it then, read the post here.
At that time NASA announced the full Saturn mosaic would be released in fall. As we approach the Winter, NASA has released the full mosaic. Here is an annotated picture.
Beautiful, is it not - like a Marble in the Sky! (with apologies to Isaac Asimov).
From the NASA website: With both Cassini's wide-angle and narrow-angle cameras aimed at Saturn, Cassini was able to capture 323 images in just over four hours. This final mosaic uses 141 of those wide-angle images. Images taken using the red, green and blue spectral filters of the wide-angle camera were combined and mosaicked together to create the natural-colour view.
This image spans about 404,880 miles (651,591 kilometres) across. Cassini itself was approximately 746,000 miles (1.2 million kilometres) from Saturn (and 1.44 billion kilometres from Earth) when the images in the mosaic were taken.
Image scale on Saturn is about 45 miles (72 kilometres) per pixel. Image courtesy NASA/JPL and CICLOPS (Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations).
Even though it is a repeat, seeing the image, what strikes me is that Saturn doesn’t look anything like in Flash Gordon adventures.
:-D
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