OrbitalHub

NASA dixit:

“February 4, 2015. Although Janus should be the least lonely of all moons – sharing its orbit with Epimetheus – it still spends most of its orbit far from other moons, alone in the vastness of space. Janus (111 miles or 179 kilometers across) and Epimetheus have the same average distance from Saturn, but they take turns being a little closer or a little farther from Saturn, swapping positions approximately every 4 years.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 19 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.6 million miles (2.5 million kilometers) from Janus and at a Sun-Janus-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 91 degrees. Image scale is 9 miles (15 kilometers) per pixel.”

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

NASA dixit:

“August 12, 2014. Although solid-looking in many images, Saturn’s rings are actually translucent. In this picture, we can glimpse the shadow of the rings on the planet through (and below) the A and C rings themselves, towards the lower right hand corner.

For centuries people have studied Saturn’s rings, but questions about the structure and composition of the rings lingered. It was only in 1857 when the physicist James Clerk Maxwell demonstrated that the rings must be composed of many small particles and not solid rings around the planet, and not until the 1970s that spectroscopic evidence definitively showed that the rings are composed mostly of water ice.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 17 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera in near-infrared light centered at 752 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 24 degrees. Image scale is 85 miles (136 kilometers) per pixel.”

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

NASA dixit:

“January 23, 2014. The Cassini spacecraft captures a glimpse of the moon Atlas shortly after emerging from Saturn’s shadow. Although the sunlight at Saturn’s distance is feeble compared to that at the Earth, objects cut off from the Sun within Saturn’s shadow cool off considerably. Scientists study how the moons around Saturn cool and warm as they enter and leave Saturn’s shadow to better understand the physical properties of Saturn’s moons.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 44 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.6 million miles (2.6 million kilometers) from Atlas and at a Sun-Atlas-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 93 degrees. Image scale is 10 miles (16 kilometers) per pixel.”

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

NASA dixit:

“October 10, 2013. This portrait looking down on Saturn and its rings was created from images obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. It was made by amateur image processor and Cassini fan Gordan Ugarkovic. This image has not been geometrically corrected for shifts in the spacecraft perspective and still has some camera artifacts. The mosaic was created from 12 image footprints with red, blue and green filters from Cassini’s imaging science subsystem. Ugarkovic used full color sets for 11 of the footprints and red and blue images for one footprint.”

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/G. Ugarkovic

NASA dixit:

“August 24, 2013. Saturn’s moon Prometheus orbits near some of its handiwork in the F ring. Prometheus (53 miles, or 86 kilometers across) and its partner Pandora gravitationally sculpt and maintain the narrow F ring.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 53 degrees below the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 104 degrees. Image scale is 7 miles (11 kilometers) per pixel.”

Image credit: NASA

NASA dixit:

“June 20, 2013. A beautiful ‘mini-jet’ appears in the dynamic F ring of Saturn. Saturn’s A ring (including the Keeler gap and just a hint of the Encke gap at the upper-right) also appears. The mini-jets are thought by imaging scientists to be caused by low-speed collisions in the F ring ejecting dusty material from the ring’s core.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 48 degrees below the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 841,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 82 degrees. Image scale is 5 miles (8 kilometers) per pixel.”

Image credit: NASA