ESA - Cassini-Huygens - Some Cassini-Huygens science highlights

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Some Cassini-Huygens science highlights

14 October 2005

'Spiral arm' ring and spokes

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This wide-angle camera image of Saturn's rings was taken after the successful completion of the orbit insertion burn when the spacecraft had crossed the ring plane and was looking upwards at the sunlit face of the rings.

The image shows details of the mysterious F ring that lies at a distance of approximately 140 200 kilometres from Saturn.

Cassini-Huygens was approximately 157 000 kilometres above the ring plane when the images were obtained. Image scale in the wide-angle camera image is approximately 9 kilometres per pixel.

Credits: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Clouds below atmosphere's surface

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This image was taken with the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on 14 December 2004, at a distance of 595 000 kilometres from Saturn, through a filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centred at 890 nanometres. It has been highly processed to enhance details. The image scale is about 32 kilometres per pixel.

Credits: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Phoebe is a captured moon

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Images like this one, showing bright 'wispy' streaks thought to be ice revealed by subsidence of crater walls, are leading to the view that Phoebe is an icy-rich body overlain with a thin layer of dark material. Obvious downslope motion of material occurring along the walls of the major craters in this image is the cause for the bright streaks, which are over-exposed here. Significant slumping has occurred along the crater wall at top left.
The slumping of material might have been caused by a small projectile punching into the steep slope of the wall of a pre-existing larger crater. Another possibility is that the material collapsed when triggered by another impact elsewhere on Phoebe. Note that the bright, exposed areas of ice are not very uniform along the wall. Small craters are exposing bright material on the ‘hummocky’ floor of the larger crater.
Elsewhere on this image, there are local areas of outcropping along the larger crater wall where denser, more resistant material is located. Whether these outcrops are large blocks being exhumed by landslides or actual 'bedrock' is not currently understood.
The crater on the left, with most of the bright streamers, is about 45 kilometres in diameter, front to back as viewed. The larger depression in which the crater sits is on the order of 100 kilometres across. The slopes from the rim down to the ‘hummocky’ floor are approximately 20 kilometres long; many of the bright streamers on the crater wall are on the order of 10 kilometres long. A future project for Cassini image scientists will be to work out the chronology of slumping events in this scene.
This image was obtained with an angle of 78 degrees between the Sun, Phoebe and the spacecraft, from a distance of 11 918 kilometres. The image scale is approximately 70 metres per pixel. No enhancement was performed on this image.

Credits: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Northern hemisphere is blue

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Mimas drifts along in its orbit against the blue backdrop of Saturn's northern latitudes in this true colour view taken by the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft

Craters on icy Mimas (398 kilometres across) give the moon a dimpled appearance.

The images were obtained using the Cassini narrow-angle camera on 18 January 2005, at a distance of approximately 1.4 million kilometres from Saturn. Resolution in the image is 8.5 kilometres per pixel on Saturn and 7.5 kilometres per pixel on Mimas. The image has been contrast-enhanced to aid visibility.

Images taken using infrared (930 nanometres), green (568 nanometres) and ultraviolet (338 nanometres) spectral filters were combined. The colours have been adjusted to match closely what the scene would look like in natural colour.

Credits: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Enceladus has atmosphere

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A temperature map of Saturn's moon Enceladus, produced by the Composite Infrared Spectrometer on the NASA/ESA/ASI spacecraft.

Based on data from previous fly-bys, the south pole should be very cold, as shown in the left panel. The right-hand panel shows a global temperature image made from measurements of radiation at wavelengths between 9 and 16.5 micrometre. The south pole is 15 Kelvin warmer than expected.

Cassini made the observation from a distance of 84 000 kilometres on the approach to Enceladus, and the image shows details as small as 25 kilometres across.

Credits: NASA/JPL/GSFC

Iapetus and Dione

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Images of Saturn's moon Iapetus taken with infrared (centred at 930 nanometres), green (568 nanometres), and ultraviolet light (338 nanometres) filters were combined to create this image.

The use of colour on Iapetus is particularly helpful for discriminating between shadows (which appear black) and the intrinsically dark terrain (which appears brownish).

The view was obtained with the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini narrow-angle camera on 31 December 2004, at a distance of about 172,900 kilometres from Iapetus. Resolution achieved in the original image was 1 kilometre per pixel. The image has been magnified by a factor of two to aid visibility of surface features.

Credits: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

New objects and changes in rings

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This new moon, provisionally named S/2005 S1, was first seen in a time-lapse sequence of images taken on 1 May 2005. A day later, an even closer view was obtained, which has allowed a measure of the moon's size and brightness.

The tiny object is in the Keeler gap and the wavy patterns in the gap edges that are generated by the moon's gravitational influence. The new moonlet is about 7 kilometres across orbits approximately 136 505 kilometres from the centre of Saturn.

Credits: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Magnetic rotation slowing down

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This is an artist's impression of the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft approaching Saturn and its magnificent rings. The glint of light behind the magnetometer boom at the bottom of the spacecraft is a reflection of the Sun.

Credits: NASA

At Saturn and Titan

Huygens raw images

Sounds of Titan

A simulated view from Huygens Cassini-Huygens mission celebrates anniversary Titan's surface seen from fly-by on 22 August 2005 Huygens 3D animation of Titan's surface Saturn's moon Phoebe in 3D Cassini-Huygens looks at Phoebe's distant past Cassini finds atmosphere on Enceladus Cassini's Hyperion fly-by