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SALT LAKE CITY — Few things are as mystical or stunning as images of space.
The Cassini spacecraft has been in space intermittently since 1997, gathering data with its 12 instruments for the NASA, European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. Currently, Cassini is monitoring Saturn’s system — including the moons Titan, Enceladus and some of its other icy moons — as part of the Solstice Mission. Toward the end of the 2017 NASA mission, Cassini will look closer at Saturn and its rings.
The images produced by Cassini, however, may be most interesting to the casual space observer. It doesn’t take a trained eye to understand the beauty of Saturn’s system.
Iapetus is a walnut-shaped moon orbiting Saturn. Its shape and a runaway migration of ice across its surface are among the causes scientists theorize may contribute to the unique shadowing.
The icy crust has preserved the ancient surface, proving a window back in time for scientists studying the formation of planets.
From 261,000 miles above Saturn’s north pole, Cassini shows the storms on the planet’s surface.
Scientists added filters to the Cassini images to show altitudes in Saturn’s polar atmosphere: red indicates deep altitudes, green shows higher altitudes.
Taken June 15 from 657,000 miles from Saturn, this image shows the sunlit side of the planet’s rings.
Titan (the larger moon) and Rhea align and show their true colors in this image taken using red, green and blue filters.
Cassini recorded this image from 1.1 million miles from Rhea and 1.5 million miles from Titan.
This Oct. 10 mosaic was created by amateur image processor Gordan Ugarkovic using 12 images from the Cassini spacecraft.
