Posted on by Jason Major

An Epic Crater Called Odysseus

On June 28 NASA’s Cassini spacecraft passed by Tethys, a 1,062-kilometer (662-mile) -wide moon of Saturn that’s made almost entirely of ice. Tethys is covered in craters of all sizes but by far the most dramatic of all is the enormous Odysseus crater, which spans an impressive 450 kilometers (280 miles) of the moon’s northern hemisphere — nearly two-fifths of its entire diameter!

In fact, whatever struck Tethys in the distant past probably should have shattered it into pieces… but didn’t.

Tethys likely held itself together because when the impact occurred that formed Odysseus, the moon was still partially molten. It was able to absorb some of the energy of the impact and thus avoid disintegration — although it was left with a quite the battle scar as an eternal reminder.

The images below are raw images from Cassini’s latest pass of Tethys, showing the moon’s rugged terrain and portions of Odysseus from a distance of 68,521 kilometers (42,577 miles).

The central peak of Odysseus has collapsed, leaving a depression — another indication that the moon wasn’t entirely solid at the time of impact.

Tethys orbits Saturn at a distance of 294,660 kilometers (183,100 miles), about 62,000 miles closer than the Moon is from Earth. Such a close proximity to Saturn subjects Tethys to tidal forces, the frictional heating of which likely helped keep it from cooling and solidifying longer than more distant moons. As a result Tethys appears somewhat less cratered than sister moons Rhea and Dione, which still bear the marks of their earliest impacts… although looking at the region south of Odysseus it’s hard to image a more extensively-cratered place.

Tethys is just another reminder of the violent place our solar system can be. Find out more about Tethys on the Cassini mission site here.

Image credits: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute. Edited by J. Major. Images have not been calibrated or validated, and each has been level-adjusted and sharpened to bring out surface detail, and in some areas deinterlacing was used to remove linear raw image artifacts.

Posted on by Jason Major

Titan’s Tides Suggest a Subsurface Sea

Saturn’s hazy Titan is now on the short list of moons that likely harbor a subsurface ocean of water, based on new findings from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

As Titan travels around Saturn during its 16-day elliptical orbits, it gets rhythmically squeezed by the gravitational pull of the giant planet — an effect known as tidal flexing (see video below.) If the moon were mostly composed of rock, the flexing would be in the neighborhood of around 3 feet (1 meter.) But based on measurements taken by the Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, Titan exhibits much more intense flexing — ten times more, in fact, as much as 30 feet (10 meters) — indicating that it’s not entirely solid at all.

Instead, Cassini scientists estimate that there’s a moon-wide ocean of liquid water beneath the frozen crust of Titan, possibly sandwiched between layers of ice or rock.

“Short of being able to drill on Titan’s surface, the gravity measurements provide the best data we have of Titan’s internal structure.”

– Sami Asmar, Cassini team member at JPL

“Cassini’s detection of large tides on Titan leads to the almost inescapable conclusion that there is a hidden ocean at depth,” said Luciano Iess, the paper’s lead author and a Cassini team member at the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. “The search for water is an important goal in solar system exploration, and now we’ve spotted another place where it is abundant.”

Although liquid water is a necessity for the development of life, the presence of it alone does not guarantee that alien organisms are swimming around in a Titanic underground ocean. It’s thought that water must be in contact with rock in order to create the necessary building blocks of life, and as yet it’s not known what situations may exist around Titan’s inner sea. But the presence of such an ocean — possibly containing trace amounts of ammonia — would help explain how methane gets replenished into the moon’s thick atmosphere.

“The presence of a liquid water layer in Titan is important because we want to understand how methane is stored in Titan’s interior and how it may outgas to the surface,” said Jonathan Lunine, a Cassini team member at Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. “This is important because everything that is unique about Titan derives from the presence of abundant methane, yet the methane in the atmosphere is unstable and will be destroyed on geologically short timescales.”

The team’s paper appears in today’s edition of the journal Science. Read more on the Cassini mission site here.

Top image: artist’s concept showing a possible scenario for the internal structure of Titan. (A. Tavani). Side image: An RGB-composite color image of Titan and Dione in front of Saturn’s face and rings, made from Cassini images acquired on May 21, 2011. (NASA/JPL/SSI. Composite by J. Major.)

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Extremes in the Saturn System

It’s just one extreme to another in this image from the Cassini spacecraft. Of course, you can’t miss the ginormous Saturn. But do you see three of what appear to be eentsy, tiny moons of the ringed planet?

Tethys (660 miles, or 1,062 kilometers across) is on the right of the image, below the rings. Smaller Enceladus (313 miles, or 504 kilometers across) is on the left of the view, below the rings. Pandora (50 miles, or 81 kilometers across) is also present in this view but is barely visible. It appears as a small grey speck above the rings on the extreme left edge of the image. Pandora has been slightly brightened by the imaging team by a factor 1.2 relative to the rest of the image.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Dec. 7, 2011 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 752 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.3 million miles (2.1 million kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is about 77 miles (124 kilometers) per pixel.

Image caption: Saturn and three small moons. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Source: CICLOPS

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Cassini Spies a Possible ‘Oasis’ on Titan

Saturn's rings lie in the distance as the Cassini spacecraft looks toward Titan and its dark region called Shangri-La, east of the landing site of the Huygens Probe. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

From a JPL press release:

New data from the Cassini spacecraft shows enduring methane lakes in the equatorial regions on Saturn’s moon Titan. Previous models of the frigid liquids on Titan’s surface showed standing bodies of liquid would only exist at the poles, but one of the newly found “tropical” lakes appears to be about half the size of Utah’s Great Salt Lake, with a depth of at least 3 feet (1 meter).

Where could the liquid for these lakes come from? “A likely supplier is an underground aquifer,” said Caitlin Griffith, the paper’s lead author and a Cassini team associate at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “In essence, Titan may have oases.”

Understanding how lakes or wetlands form on Titan helps scientists learn about the moon’s weather. Like Earth’s hydrological cycle, Titan has a “methane” cycle, with methane rather than water circulating. In Titan’s atmosphere, ultraviolet light breaks apart methane, initiating a chain of complicated organic chemical reactions. But existing models haven’t been able to account for the abundant supply of methane.

“An aquifer could explain one of the puzzling questions about the existence of methane, which is continually depleted,” Griffith said. “Methane is a progenitor of Titan’s organic chemistry, which likely produces interesting molecules like amino acids, the building blocks of life.”

Global circulation models of Titan have theorized that liquid methane in the moon’s equatorial region evaporates and is carried by wind to the north and south poles, where cooler temperatures cause methane to condense. When it falls to the surface, it forms the polar lakes. On Earth, water is similarly transported by the circulation, yet the oceans also transport water, thereby countering the atmospheric effects.

The latest results come from Cassini’s visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, which detected the dark areas in the tropical region known as Shangri-La, near the spot where the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe landed in 2005. When Huygens landed, the heat of the probe’s lamp vaporized some methane from the ground, indicating it had landed in a damp area.

Areas appear dark to the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer when liquid ethane or methane are present. Some regions could be shallow, ankle-deep puddles. Cassini’s radar mapper has seen lakes in the polar region, but hasn’t detected any lakes at low latitudes.

The tropical lakes detected by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer have remained since 2004. Only once has rain been detected falling and evaporating in the equatorial regions, and only during the recent expected rainy season. Scientists therefore deduce the lakes could not be substantively replenished by rain.

“We had thought that Titan simply had extensive dunes at the equator and lakes at the poles, but now we know that Titan is more complex than we previously thought,” said Linda Spilker, the Cassini project scientist based at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. “Cassini still has multiple opportunities to fly by this moon going forward, so we can’t wait to see how the details of this story fill out.”

The findings appear in this week’s issue of the journal Nature.

Posted on by Tammy Plotner

Weekly SkyWatcher’s Forecast: June 4-10, 2012

Graphic Courtesy of Dave Reneke.
Graphic Courtesy of Dave Reneke

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Greeting, fellow SkyWatchers! It’s gonna’ be a great week! We start off with a partial lunar eclipse of the Strawberry Moon, head into the historic Venus Transit, study some Herschel objects, catch both the Scorpid and Arietid Meteor Showers, practice some binocular astronomy and even take on some challenge objects! How awesome is that? Whenever you’re ready, just follow me into the back yard…

Monday, June 4 – Tonight the Moon is full. Often referred to as the Full Strawberry Moon, this name was a constant to every Algonquin tribe in North America. But, our friends in Europe referred to it as the Rose Moon. The North American version came about because the short season for harvesting strawberries comes each year during the month of June – so the full Moon that occurs during that month was named for this tasty red fruit!

This evening as the Sun sets and the Moon rises opposite of it, take advantage of some quiet time and really stop to look at the eastern horizon. If you are lucky enough to have clear skies, you will see the Earth’s shadow rising – like a dark, sometimes blue band – that stretches around 180 degrees of horizon. Look just above it for a Rayleigh scattering effect known as the “Belt of Venus”. This beautiful pinkish glow is caused by the backscattering of sunlight and is often referred to as the anti-twilight arch. As the Sun continues to set, this boundary between our shadow and the arch rises higher in the sky and gently blends with the coming night. What you are seeing is the shadow of the Earth’s translucent atmosphere, casting a shadow back upon itself. This happens every night! Pretty cool, huh?

For some of us, it’s eclipse time! According to NASA’s Fred Espenak, most of the Americas will experience moonset before the partial lunar eclipse ends while eastern Asia will miss the beginning of the eclipse because it occurs before moonrise. The Moon’s contact times with Earth’s shadows are: Penumbral Eclipse Begins: 08:48:09 UT, Partial Eclipse Begins: 09:59:53 UT, Greatest Eclipse: 11:03:13 UT, Partial Eclipse Ends: 12:06:30 UT, Penumbral Eclipse Ends: 13:18:17. At the instant of greatest eclipse the umbral eclipse magnitude will reach 0.3705. At that time the Moon will be at the zenith for observers in the South Pacific. In spite of the fact that just a third of the Moon enters the umbral shadow (the Moon’s southern limb dips 12.3 arc-minutes into the umbra) the partial phase still lasts over 2 hours. Be sure to visit the resource pages for a visibility map and links to precise times and locations!

Tuesday, June 5 – Heads up for all observers! Today’s universal date marks an historic event – Venus will transit the Sun! This event will cross international date lines, so be sure to know ahead of time when and where to watch. North America will be able to see the start of the transit, while South Asia, the Middle East, and most of Europe will catch the end of it. For some great information on when, where and how to watch, visit www.transitofvenus.org. If you’re clouded out, there’s plenty of resources on-line to view this rare event. One that promises to have plenty of extra bandwidth to serve visitors is Astronomy Live. Be there!!

For all you Stargazers, keep watch for the Scorpid meteor shower. Its radiant will be near the constellation of Ophiuchus, and the average fall rate will be about 20 per hour with some fireballs.

While you’re out, take the time to check out Alpha Herculis -Ras Algethi. You will find it not only to be an interesting variable, but a colorful double as well. The primary star is one of the largest known red giants and at about 430 light years away, it is also one of the coolest. Its 5.4 magnitude greenish companion star is easily separated in even small scopes – but even it is a binary! This entire star system is enclosed in an expanding gaseous shell that originates from the evolving red giant. Enjoy it tonight.

Wednesday, June 6 – So far we’ve studied many Herschel objects in disguise as Messier catalog items – but we haven’t really focused on some mighty fine galaxies that are within the power of the intermediate to large telescope. Tonight let’s take a serious skywalk as we head to 6 Comae and drop two degrees south.

At magnitude 10.9, Herschel catalog object H I.35 is also known by its New General Catalog number of 4216 (Right Ascension: 12 : 15.9 – Declination: +13 : 09). This splendid edge-on galaxy has a bright nucleus and will walk right out in larger telescopes with no aversion required. But, the most fascinating part about studying anything in the Virgo cluster is about to be revealed.

While studying structure in NGC 4216, averted vision picks up magnitude 12 NGC 4206 (Right Ascension:12 : 15.3 – Declination: +13 : 02) to the south. This is also a Herschel object – H II.135. While it is smaller and fainter, the nucleus will be the first thing to catch your attention – and then you’ll notice it is also an edge-on galaxy! As if this weren’t distracting enough, while re-centering NGC 4216, sometimes the movement is just enough to allow the viewer to catch yet another edge-on galaxy to the north – NGC 4222 (Right Ascension: 12 : 16.4 – Declination: +13 : 19). At magnitude 14, you can only expect to be able to see it in larger scopes, but what a treat this trio is!

Is there a connection between certain types of galaxy structures within the Virgo cluster? Science certainly seems to think so. While low metallicity studies involving these galaxies are going on, research into evolution of galaxy clusters themselves continue to make new strides forward in our understanding of the universe. Capture them tonight!

Thursday, June 7 – If you’re up before dawn the next two days or out just after sunset, enjoy the peak of the June Arietid meteors – the year’s strongest daylight shower – with up to 30 visible per hour.

If you’d like to try your ear at radio astronomy with the offspring of sungrazing asteroid Icarus, tune an FM radio to the lowest frequency not receiving a clear signal. An outdoor antenna pointed at the zenith increases your chances, but even a car radio can pick up strong bursts! Simply turn up the static and listen. Those hums, whistles, beeps, bongs, and occasional snatches of signals are our own radio signals being reflected off the meteor’s ion trail!

Tonight let’s study a radio-source galaxy so bright it can be seen in binoculars – 8.6 magnitude M87 (Right Ascension: 12 : 30.8 – Declination: +12 : 24), about two fingerwidths northwest of Rho Virginis. This giant elliptical was discovered by Charles Messier in 1781 and cataloged as M87. Spanning 120,000 light-years, it’s an incredibly luminous galaxy containing far more mass and stars than the Milky Way – gravitationally distorting its four dwarf satellites galaxies. M87 is known to contain in excess of several thousand globular clusters – up to 150,000 – and far more than our own 200.

In 1918, H. D. Curtis of Lick Observatory discovered something else – M87 has a jet of gaseous material extending from its core and pushing out several thousand light-years into space. This highly perturbed jet exhibits the same polarization as synchrotron radiation – a property of neutron stars. Containing a series of small knots and clouds as observed by Halton Arp at Palomar in 1977, he also discovered a second jet in 1966 erupting in the opposite direction. Thanks to these two properties, M87 made Arp’s “Catalog of Peculiar Galaxies” as number 152.

In 1954 Walter Baade and R. Minkowski identified M87 with radio source Virgo A, discovering a weaker halo in 1956. Its position over an x-ray cloud extending through the Virgo cluster make M87 a source of an incredible amount of x-rays. Because of its many strange properties, M87 remains a target of scientific investigation. The Hubble has shown a violent nucleus surrounded by a fast rotating accretion disc, whose gaseous make-up may be part of a huge system of interstellar matter. As of today, only one supernova event has been recorded – yet M87 remains one of the most active and highly prized study galaxies of all. Capture it tonight!

Friday, June 8 – Born on this date in 1625 was Giovanni Cassini – the most notable observer following Galileo. As head of the Paris Observatory for many years, he was the first to observe seasonal changes on Mars and measure its parallax (and so, its distance). This set the scale of the solar system for the first time. Cassini was the first to describe Jovian features, and studied the Galilean moons’ orbits. He also discovered four moons of Saturn, but he is best remembered for being the first to see the namesake division between the A and B rings.

Why not honor Cassini’s work by visiting Saturn tonight? In case you hadn’t noticed, the beautiful yellowish “star” has been on the move and is now around a degree away to the southeast from a previous study star – Porrima! Not only is this a lovely visual, but an easy way to find Saturn if you’re new to the game. Seeing the Cassini Division in Saturn’s ring structure and some of the smaller moons will require at least a 114mm telescope and steady seeing. Use as much magnification as conditions will allow and look for unusual things – like seeing the planet edge through the gap!

Tonight we’ll use Rho Virginis as a stepping stone to more galaxies. Get on your mark and move one and a half degrees north for M59 (Right Ascension:12 : 42.0 – Declination: +11 : 39)…

First discovered in 1779 by J. G. Koehler while studying a comet, this 11th magnitude elliptical galaxy was observed and labeled by Messier who was just a bit behind him. Much denser than our own galaxy, M59 is only about one-fourth the size of the Milky Way. In a smaller telescope, it will appear as a faint oval, while larger telescopes will make out a more concentrated core region.

Now shift one half degree east for brighter and larger M60. Also caught first by Koehler on the same night as M59, it was “discovered” a day later by yet another astronomer who had missed M59! It took Charles Messier another four days until this 10th magnitude galaxy interfered with his comet studies and was cataloged. At around 60 million light-years away, M59 is one of the largest ellipticals known and has five times more mass than our galaxy. As a study object of the Hubble Telescope, this giant has shown a concentrated core with over 2 billion solar masses. Photographed and studied by large terrestrial telescopes, M59 may contain as many as 5100 globular clusters in its halo.

While our backyard equipment is essentially revealing M59?s core, there is a curiosity here. It shares “space” with spiral galaxy NGC 4647 (Right Ascension: 12 : 43.5 – Declination: +11 : 35). Telescopes of even modest aperture will pick up the nucleus and faint structure of this small face-on galaxy. Harlow Shapely found the pair odd because – while they are relatively close in astronomical terms – they are very different in age and development. Halton Arp also studied this combination of an elliptical galaxy affecting a spiral and cataloged it as “Peculiar Galaxy 116.” Be sure to mark your notes!

Saturday, June 9 – Today is the birthday of Johann Gottfried Galle. Born in Germany in 1812, Galle was the first observer to locate Neptune. He is also known for being Encke’s assistant – and he’s one of the few astronomers ever to have observed Halley’s Comet twice. Unfortunately, he died two months after the comet passed perihelion in 1910, but at a ripe old age of 98! I wonder if he knew Mark Twain?

Tonight while we’re out, let’s have a look at a Virgo galaxy bright enough for smaller instruments and detailed enough to delight larger scopes. Starting at Delta Virginis, move about a fistwidth to the west where you will see two fainter stars, 16 (south) and 17 (north) Virginis. You’ll find M61 (Right Ascension:12 : 21.9 – Declination: +04 : 28) located about one-half degree south of the yellow double star 17.

Its discovery was credited to Barnabus Oriani during that fateful year of 1779 when Messier was so avid about chasing a comet that he mistook it for one. While Charles had seen it on the same night, it took him two days to figure out it wasn’t moving and four more before he cataloged it. Fortunately, 7 years later Mr. Herschel assigned it his own number of H I.139, even though he wasn’t fond of assigning his own number to Messier catalog objects.

At near 10th magnitude, this spiral galaxy will show a slightly elongated form and brighter core area to small telescopes, and really come to life in larger ones. Close to our own Milky Way galaxy in size, this larger member of the Virgo cluster has great spiral arm structure that displays both knots and dark dustlanes – as well as a beautifully developed nucleus region. M61 has also been host to four supernova events between 1926 and 1999 – all of which have been well within range of amateur telescopes.

For an added Herschel treat tonight for larger scopes, hop back to star 17 and head about one half degree due west for near galactic pair NGC 4281 (H II.573) and NGC 4273 (H II.569). Here is a study of two galaxies similar in magnitude (12) and size – but of different structure. Northeastern NGC 4281 (Right Ascension: 12 : 20.4 – Declination: +05 : 23) is an elliptical, and by virtue of its central concentration will appear slightly larger and brighter – while southwestern NGC 4273 (Right Ascension: 12 : 19.9 – Declination: +05 : 21) is an irregular spiral which will appear brighter in the middle but more elongated and faded along its frontiers. Sharp-eyed observers may also note fainter (13th magnitude) NGC 4270 (Right Ascension: 12 : 19.8 – Declination: +05 : 28) north of this pairing.

Now, go back to Rho once again and about a fingerwidth northwest for yet another bright galaxy – M58 – a spiral galaxy actually discovered by Messier in 1779! As one of the brightest galaxies in the Virgo cluster, M58 (Right Ascension: 12 : 37.7 – Declination: +11 : 49) is one of only four that have barred structure. It was cataloged by Lord Rosse as a spiral in 1850. In binoculars, it will look much like our previously studied ellipticals, but a small telescope under good conditions will pick up the bright nucleus and a faint halo of structure – while larger ones will see the central concentration of the bar across the core. Chalk up another Messier study for both binoculars and telescopes and let’s get on to something really cool!

Around a half degree southwest are NGC 4567 (Right Ascension: 12 : 36.5 – Declination: +11 : 15) and NGC 4569 (Right Ascension: 12 : 36.8 – Declination: +13 : 10). L. S. Copeland dubbed them the “Siamese Twins,” but this galaxy pair is also considered part of the Virgo cluster. While seen from our viewpoint as touching galaxies, no evidence exists of tidal filaments or distortions in structure, making them a line of sight phenomenon and not interacting members. While that might take little of the excitement away from the “Twins,” a supernova event has been spotted in NGC 4569 as recently as 2004. While the duo is visible in smaller scopes as two, with soft twin nuclei, intermediate and larger scopes will see an almost V-shaped or heart-shaped pattern where the structures overlap. If you’re doing double galaxy studies, this is a fine, bright one! If you see a faint galaxy in the field as well, be sure to add NGC 4564 (Right Ascension: 12 : 36.4 – Declination: +11 : 26) to your notes.

Sunday, June 10 – While I’m sure that unaided eye viewers and binocular users are tired of the galaxy hunt, be sure to take the time to look at many old favorites that are now in view. To the eye, one of the most splendid signs of the changing seasons is the Ursa Major Moving Group which sits above Polaris for northern hemisphere observers. For the southern hemisphere, the return of Crux serves the same purpose.

Old favorites have now begun to appear again, such as Hercules, Cygnus and Scorpius… and with them a wealth of starry clusters and nebulae that will soon come into view as the night deepens and the hour grows late. Before we leave Virgo for the year, there is one last object that is seldom explored and such a worthy target that we must visit it before we go. Its name is NGC 5634 and you’ll find it halfway between Iota and Mu Virginis (RA 14 29.37 Dec -05 58.35)…First discovered by Sir William Herschel on March 5, 1785 and cataloged as H I.70, this magnitude 9.5 small globular cluster isn’t for everyone, but thanks to an 11th magnitude line-of-sight star on its eastern edge, it sure is interesting. At class IV, it’s more concentrated than many globular clusters, although its 19th magnitude members make it near impossible to resolve with backyard equipment.

Located a bit more than 82,000 light-years from our solar system and about 69,000 light-years from the galactic center, you’ll truly enjoy this globular for the randomly scattered stellar field which accompanies it. In the finderscope, an 8th magnitude star will lead the way – not truly a member of the cluster, but one that lies between us. Capturable in scopes as small as 4.5?, look for a concentrated central area surrounded by a haze of stellar members – a huge number of which are recently discovered variables. While you look at this globular, keep this in mind… Based on observations with the Italian Telescopio Nazionale Galileo, it is now surmised that the NGC 5634 globular cluster has the same position and radial velocity as does the Sagittarius dwarf spheroidal galaxy. Because of the dwarf galaxy’s metal-poor population of stars, it is believed that NGC 5634 may have once been part of the dwarf galaxy – and been pulled away by our own tidal field to become part of the Sagittarius stream!

Until next week? Wishing you clear skies for the Partial Lunar Eclipse, Venus Transit and the meteor showers!

Posted on by Jason Major

Cassini Captures a Rarely-Seen Moon

Closest view of Saturn's moon Methone ever captured by Cassini

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While many of us here on Earth were waiting for the Moon to take a bite out of the Sun this past Sunday, Cassini was doing some moon watching of its own, 828.5 million miles away!

The image above is a color-composite raw image of Methone (pronounced meh-tho-nee), a tiny, egg-shaped moon only 2 miles (3 km) across. Discovered by Cassini in 2004, Methone’s orbit lies between Mimas and Enceladus, at a distance of 120,546 miles (194,000 km) from Saturn — that’s about half the distance between Earth and the Moon.

At an altitude of 1,200 miles (1900 km) this was Cassini’s closest pass ever of Methone, a rare visit that occurred after the spacecraft departed the much larger Tethys.

Along with sister moons Pallene and Anthe, Methone is part of a group called the Alkyonides, named after daughters of the god Alkyoneus in Greek mythology. The three moons may be leftovers from a larger swarm of bodies that entered into orbit around Saturn — or they may be pieces that broke off from either Mimas or Enceladus.

Earlier on Sunday, May 20, Cassini paid a relatively close visit to Tethys (pronounced tee-this), a 662-mile (1065-km) -wide moon made almost entirely of ice. One of the most extensively cratered worlds in the Solar System, Tethys’ surface is dominated by craters of all sizes — from the tiniest to the giant 250-mile (400-km) -wide Odysseus crater — as well as gouged by the enormous Ithaca Chasma, a series of deep valleys running nearly form pole to pole.

Saturn's icy moon Tethys with Ithaca Chasma visible, seen by Cassini on May 20, 2012.
Tethys' rugged and heavily-cratered surface near the terminator
Cassini looks down into the 62 mile (100 km) wide Ithaca Chasma

Cassini passed within 34,000 miles (54,000 km) of Tethys on May 20, before heading to Methone and then moving on to its new path toward Titan, a trajectory that will eventually take it up out of Saturn’s equatorial plane into a more inclined orbit in order to better image details of the rings and  Saturn’s poles.

Read more about this flyby on the Cassini mission site here. and see more raw images straight from the spacecraft on the CICLOPS imaging lab site here.

Image credit: NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute. (Color-composite image edited by J. Major.)

Posted on by Jason Major

A New Angle on Titan

Color-composite image of Titan and Saturn (NASA/JPL/SSI/J. Major)

Here’s a great shot of Titan and Saturn acquired by Cassini on May 6, 2012 just after a pass by the haze-covered moon. It’s a color-composite made from images taken in Cassini’s red, green and blue color channels, and the resulting image was color adjusted a bit to appear more “Saturny”.

UPDATE 7/2/12: The image above is featured in today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)… check it out here.

Cassini also made some closer passes of Titan on May 6, taking images within about 710,000 km. After recent passes of Encealdus and Dione, Cassini buzzed past Titan in preparation of a targeted flyby on May 22, after which it will head up and out out of the “moonplane” in order to get a better view of Saturn’s rings and upper latitudes.

After that, Cassini won’t be playing amongst the moons again for three years, so images like this will be a rarity for a while.

Another image of Titan, closer-in and set against Saturn’s rings and clouds, shows the fine, transparent structure of the moon’s upper atmospheric haze layers:

Created by the breakdown of methane in Titan’s opaque atmosphere by UV radiation, the haze is composed of complex hydrocarbons that extend outwards up to ten times the thickness of Earth’s atmosphere!

(The RGB layers weren’t available for this particular view, so there’s no color version of it.)

Check out previous images from Cassini’s flyby of Dione and Enceladus, and follow along with the Cassini mission on the JPL site here.

Top image: Color-composite image of Titan and Saturn (NASA/JPL/SSI/J. Major) Bottom image: Titan in blue wavelength against Saturn (NASA/JPL/SSI)

Posted on by Jason Major

Exploration at its Finest: Cassini Visits Dione

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After completing its most recent flyby of Enceladus, Cassini made a pass by Dione — its final visit of the icy moon for the next three years. Coming within  5,000 miles (8000 km) of Dione on May 2, Cassini captured some fantastic images of the moon’s heavily-cratered and frozen surface. Here’s just a few of the raw images that arrived back here on Earth earlier today:

Crescent-lit Dione, with some reflected light via Saturnshine
A nearly fully-lit Dione, with Saturn's rings in the background
Dione's extensively-cratered limb
Some of Dione's signature "wispy lines", bright icy faces of sheer cliffs now known to be tectonic in origin
A color-composite image of an ancient impact crater on the edge of Dione's Saturn-facing side - this could be from the impact that spun the moon 180 degrees. (NASA/JPL/SSI/J. Major)

698 miles (1123 km) in diameter, Dione orbits Saturn at about the same distance that the Moon orbits Earth. Its composition is two-thirds water ice, which at the incredibly cold temperatures found around Saturn behaves like rock does here on Earth.

 

Cassini won’t visit Dione so closely again until June 2015, after spending three years angled high out of the equatorial plane while it studies Saturn’s rings and polar regions.

As Carolyn Porco, Cassini Imaging Team Leader said today, “This is exploration at its finest. It won’t continue forever. So, enjoy it while it lasts!”

See more on the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) site here.

Image credits: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute 

 

Posted on by Jason Major

Enceladus On Display In Newest Images From Cassini

Enceladus' southern ice geysers are brilliant in backlit sunlight (NASA/JPL/SSI/J. Major)

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The latest images are in from Saturn’s very own personal paparazzi, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, fresh from its early morning flyby of the ice-spewing moon Enceladus. And, being its last closeup for the next three years, the little moon didn’t disappoint!

The image above is a composite I made from two raw images (this one and this one) assembled to show Enceladus in its crescent-lit entirety with jets in full force. The images were rotated to orient the moon’s southern pole — where the jets originate — toward the bottom.

Cassini was between 72,090 miles (116,000 km) and 90,000 miles (140,000 km) from Enceladus when these images were acquired.

This morning’s E-19 flyby completed a trio of recent close passes by Cassini of the 318-mile (511-km) -wide moon, bringing the spacecraft as low as 46 miles (74 km) above its frozen surface. The goal of the maneuver was to gather data about Enceladus’ internal mass — particularly in the region around its southern pole, where a reservoir of liquid water is thought to reside — and also to look for “hot spots” on its surface that would give more information about its overall energy distribution.

Cassini had previously discovered that Enceladus radiates a surprising amount of heat from its surface, mostly along the “tiger stripe” features — long, deep furrows (sulcae) that gouge its southern hemisphere, they are the source of the water-ice geysers.

Cassini also used the flyby opportunity to study Enceladus’ gravitational field.

By imaging the moon with backlit lighting from the Sun the highly-reflective ice particles in the jets become visible. More direct lighting reduces the jets’ visibility in images, which must be exposed for the natural light of the scene or risk “blowing out” due to Enceladus’ natural high reflectivity.

The images below are raw spacecraft downloads right from the Cassini’s imaging headquarters in Boulder, CO.

Enceladus' geysers in action on May 2, 2012. (NASA/JPL/SSI)
Enceladus sprays ice into the hazy E ring, which orbits Saturn (NASA/JPL/SSI)

Cassini also swung closely by Dione during this morning’s flyby but the images from that encounter aren’t available yet. Stay tuned to Universe Today for more postcards from Saturn!

As always, you can follow along with the ongoing Cassini mission on JPL’s dedicated site here, as well as on the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) site.

Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

Cassini’s Last Flyby of Enceladus Until 2015

Below a darkened Enceladus, a plume of water ice is backlit in this view. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

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On May 2, the Cassini spacecraft will be swooping past the moon we all love to love — Enceladus — and coming within 74 kilometers (46 miles) of its fractured, jet-spewing surface. The images should be spectacular, and the science should be just as enticing. With Cassini’s radio science experiment, scientists hope to learn more about how mass is distributed under Enceladus’ south polar region, the very interesting place which features jets of water ice, water vapor and organic compounds spraying out of long fractures.

This is the last close flyby of Enceladus until 2015, so we have to take advantage of the views!

Cassini scientists will be looking specifically for a concentration of mass in that region could indicate subsurface liquid water or an intrusion of warmer-than-average ice that might explain the unusual plume activity. They’ll also be observing the plumes and looking for hot spots to try and understand the global energy balance of Enceladus.

They also hope to learn more about the moon’s internal structure by measuring variations in the gravitational pull of Enceladus against the steady radio link to NASA’s Deep Space Network on Earth.

Additionally, Cassini’s composite infrared spectrometer instrument will be observing the side of Enceladus that always faces away from Saturn to monitor for hot spots. The imaging camera team also plans to take images of the plume to look for variability in the jets.

Cassini will also be flying by Dione at a distance of about 8,000 kilometers (5,000 miles), enabling the imaging cameras to create several mosaic images of the icy moon, and the composite infrared spectrometer to monitor heat emission.

We’ll try to post images and info as they become available!