Saturn at equinox

[minidog]

Checking in with NASA's Cassini spacecraft, our current emissary to Saturn, some 1.5 billion kilometers (932 million miles) distant from Earth, we find it recently gathering images of the Saturnian system at equinox. During the equinox, the sunlight casts long shadows across Saturn's rings, highlighting previously known phenomena and revealing a few never-before seen images. Cassini continues to orbit Saturn, part of its extended Equinox Mission, funded through through September 2010. A proposal for a further extension is under consideration, one that would keep Cassini in orbit until 2017, ending with a spectacular series of orbits inside the rings followed by a suicide plunge into Saturn on Sept. 15, 2017.

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2009/10/saturn_at_equinox.html

23 pictures

 

[BlueBalls]

Excellent pictures :thumbsup:

 

[CunningStunts]

Very cool pics.

I was watching the Discover channel recently and they were saying that the rings will be gone someday, either flung away from Saturn by some event, or sucked into the gas giant by gravity. They are a beautiful anomaly in the solar system :thumbsup:

 

[lurkingdirk]

amazing, amazing pictures. thanks a lot for sharing that! i love extraordinary pictures like this. :thumbsup:

 

[maildude]

Thanks again, MD !!! :thumbsup:

 

[hammerer]

Great pics. Thanks.

 

[Korastiz]

Those pictures are unreal! Thanks for sharing them

 

[habo9]

Cool thread MiniD , I like stuff like this , I seen they found new rings far out around the planet a few weeks ago are these pictures from the same report

 

[StanScratch]

The moving pictures of Janus are some of the most startling I've seen for quite a while. They almost look as if they can be touched.

Cool thread MiniD , I like stuff like this , I seen they found new rings far out around the planet a few weeks ago are these pictures from the same report

The new rings were discovered by the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is orbiting Earth (I think. At least it is much closer to Earth than Cassini). The new rings are so faint and far away, Cassini never would have been able to detect them.

 

[habo9]

The moving pictures of Janus are some of the most startling I've seen for quite a while. They almost look as if they can be touched.



The new rings were discovered by the Spitzer Space Telescope, which is orbiting Earth (I think. At least it is much closer to Earth than Cassini). The new rings are so faint and far away, Cassini never would have been able to detect them.

Cheers mate thanks for that , I will have to look into it :thumbsup: