#cassini

[wonders-of-the-cosmos]

Storm at Saturn's north pole

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill

[spacewonder19]

The Colors of Saturn from Cassini © ©

[the-wolf-and-moon]

Rings Of Saturn

[without-ado]

Hubble Multiwavelength OPAL Saturn

l NASA Hubble Mission Team l OPAL program

[cosmicexplorersblog]

Earth as seen through Saturn's ring(Cassini)

[humanoidhistory]

10 years ago today: Planet Saturn, viewed by NASA's Cassini probe on August 18, 2013.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

The beautiful rings of Saturn in near infrared taken by the Cassini spacecraft in 2014. 🪐

📷: NASA / Maksim Kakitsev

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Cassini–Huygens, commonly called Cassini, was a space-research mission by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to send a space probe to study the planet Saturn and its system, including its rings and natural satellites.

The Flagship-class robotic spacecraft comprised both NASA's Cassini space probe and ESA's Huygens lander, which landed on Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

Cassini was the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter its orbit, where it stayed from 2004 to 2017.

The two craft took their names from the astronomers Giovanni Cassini (1625-1712) and Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695).

[thishappensallthetime]

(via cassini mission photos - Google Search)

[cheellart]

Cassini 🪐 Cassini was a sophisticated robotic spacecraft sent to study and capture the beauty of Saturn. She embarked on a great adventure and made many fascinating discoveries along her way. Until finally, with one last maneuver, she plunged into the gas giant and perished in a final, fatal embrace. She became one with her muse for an eternity. You can read more about the original Cassini’s journey here and here :)

[itsfullofstars]

[astronomy-posts]

[wonders-of-the-cosmos]

Moons of Saturn (Janus & Titan) and rings - March 21 2006

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/CICLOPS/Kevin M. Gill

[spacewonder19]

Saturn's Earthlike Moon, Titan in visible/infrared ©

[the-wolf-and-moon]

Cassini's Saturn

[without-ado]

Saturn and Jupiter's Auroras l Cassini/Hubble

[roversrovers]

Fresh Tiger Stripes on Saturn's Enceladus Image Credit: NASA, ESA, JPL, SSI, Cassini Imaging Team Explanation: Do underground oceans vent through canyons on Saturn's moon Enceladus? Long features dubbed tiger stripes are known to be spewing ice from the moon's icy interior into space, creating a cloud of fine ice particles over the moon's South Pole and creating Saturn's mysterious E-ring. Evidence for this has come from the robot Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017. Pictured here, a high resolution image of Enceladus is shown from a close flyby. The unusual surface features dubbed tiger stripes are visible in false-color blue. Why Enceladus is active remains a mystery, as the neighboring moon Mimas, approximately the same size, appears quite dead. An analysis of ejected ice grains has yielded evidence that complex organic molecules exist inside Enceladus. These large carbon-rich molecules bolster -- but do not prove -- that oceans under Enceladus' surface could contain life.

Today's Astronomy Picture of the Day is my favorite celestial object, the reason I got into space and science at all! As a child the idea that the subsurface oceans of Enceladus could potentially host alien life spurred my imagination and desire to learn all about it.