[星宇奥秘]卡西尼探测录 Cassini Equinox Mission

本帖记录卡西尼探测器传回的土星系的精彩写照

Three different false-color views of Saturn's moon Iapetus show the boundary of the global "color dichotomy" on the hemisphere of this moon facing away from Saturn. The "color dichotomy," which has been detected in images from the Cassini imaging team, is a second global pattern found on Iapetus besides the well-known global brightness dichotomy.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Saturn's moon Rhea passes in front of Dione, as seen from the Cassini spacecraft.
These images are part of a "mutual event" sequence in which one moon passes close to, or in front of, another. These observations help scientists refine their understanding of the orbits of Saturn's moons. Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across) is about 2.1 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Cassini in this image. Dione (1,123 kilometers, or 698 miles across) is about 2.6 million kilometers (1.6 million miles) from Cassini.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

The Cassini spacecraft captures a couple of small moons in this image taken while the spacecraft was nearly in the plane of Saturn's rings.
Near the top of this image, a crescent Mimas (396 kilometers, or 246 miles across) is closer to Cassini than the rings are. Pan (28 kilometers, or 17 miles across) is visible as a tiny dot in the Encke Gap of the A ring near the middle of the bottom of the image.
This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ringplane.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Orbiting near the plane of Saturn's rings, the Cassini spacecraft looks across the span of the rings to spy the small moon Epimetheus.
The brightest spoke is visible on the left of the image, but others can be seen near the middle of the image and elsewhere on the B ring. See 'Tis the Season for Spokes to learn more about these ghostly radial markings.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

These two global images of Iapetus show the extreme brightness dichotomy on the surface of this peculiar Saturnian moon. The left-hand panel shows the moon's leading hemisphere and the right-hand panel shows the moon's trailing side. While low and mid latitudes of the leading side exhibit a surface almost as dark as charcoal, broad tracts of the trailing side are almost as bright as snow. The dark terrain covers about 40 percent of the surface and is named Cassini Regio. The names of the bright terrain are Roncevaux Terra (north) and Saragossa Terra (south).
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

This image shows an updated map of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus, generated by the Cassini imaging team. The map incorporates new images taken in 2008, with better image processing techniques.
Compared to the previous Enceladus map released in December 2008 (see Map of Enceladus - December 2008), the new map features better resolution in several areas, including the equatorial region between 30 degrees north and south latitude and a region between 30 degrees and 150 degrees west longitude. That mosaic and this one were shifted by 3.5 degrees to the west, compared to 2006 versions, to be consistent with the International Astronomical Union longitude definition for Enceladus.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

漂亮

This figure shows shifting stratospheric temperatures obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft between 2005 (left) to 2008 (right). The difference between the temperatures is shown in the middle, with red indicating warming in the stratosphere and blue indicating cooling.