Cassini-Huygens - Cassini-Huygens Discussion

Palomar · 2004-09-15 10:07:59

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … mage]Check out the south pole "dot" and ring

*I probably would have passed up posting this image (in some ways resembles other recently-released images), but something about this one caught my attention particularly. In all other pics of Saturn's southern hemisphere/south pole I've seen, the SP is a dark "solid" circle (or seems to be) -- no "bull's eye" appearance.

In this shot the circle is smaller and is surrounded by a ring of the same hue - ! I'm sure this is the 1st such photo I've seen. [:edit: Also seems there's yet another (very faint) ring outside the dark thick one]

Um...I wonder if that's because it's more of a close-up pic and more detail is thereby apparent or if perhaps the SP circle is doing funky things? ???

Guess Saturn really IS ringed.

--Cindy

Julius Caeser · 2004-09-16 12:30:48

just hope the parachute system on huygens doesnt suffer the same faith as Genesis probe ???

Palomar · 2004-09-16 19:42:34

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … hread-like shadows :up: Superb. Looks like piano wires stretched across...from there to there. Best view for me is 75% brightness and contrast on the monitor.

And an explanation as to why bluishness through the rings. How exquisite. And the longer I look at the rings in this image, the more delicate multihues the eye discerns.

Isn't this wonderful? All the marvels we are privileged to see which astronomers of yesteryear would have given their right arms to behold.

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … e]Hovering Mimas

*Fantasy artwork come to life. :;):

--Cindy

Shaun Barrett · 2004-09-16 20:22:15

Cindy:-

Isn't this wonderful? All the marvels we are privileged to see which astronomers of yesteryear would have given their right arms to behold.

So very true!
You just shook me out of by blase torpor and made me appreciate again the incredible privilege we are enjoying in being able to see all this.
Wouldn't it be fantastic to sit Galileo down at a computer terminal and show him colour pictures of Jupiter and its moons in close-up! And some of these magnificent shots of Saturn's ring system! I'd love to see the look on his face .. Wow!!

Palomar · 2004-09-20 07:03:12

http://www.saturntoday.com/news/viewsr. … 90]Huygens in-flight checkout test successful

*Passed its 15th "In-Flight Checkout" with flying colors. Is the last IFC before departing from Cassini in December "and it included some specific activities that were intended to prepare for the separation."

*This IFC included testing the Master Timer Unit.

"Because Huygens will spend three weeks coasting towards Titan following separation from the Cassini orbiter, its systems and instruments are powered down...The MTU is the ëtriple-redundant' alarm-clock that has the most important job of waking up Huygens a few hours before its entry into Titan's atmosphere."

*Transmission of data has a delay of 80 minutes from Saturn to Earth.

MTU test successful, all instruments performing as expected.

Go Huygens!! :up:

--Cindy
http://www.saturntoday.com/news/viewsr. … 90]Huygens in-flight checkout test successful

*Passed its 15th "In-Flight Checkout" with flying colors. Is the last IFC before departing from Cassini in December "and it included some specific activities that were intended to prepare for the separation."

*This IFC included testing the Master Timer Unit.

"Because Huygens will spend three weeks coasting towards Titan following separation from the Cassini orbiter, its systems and instruments are powered down...The MTU is the ëtriple-redundant' alarm-clock that has the most important job of waking up Huygens a few hours before its entry into Titan's atmosphere."

*Transmission of data has a delay of 80 minutes from Saturn to Earth.

MTU test successful, all instruments performing as expected.

Go Huygens!! :up:

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-09-20 11:44:24

*Old Jove, courtesy of Cassini. En route to Saturn of course, Cassini snapped these marvy pics of Jupiter, Galilean moons, etc. Enjoy the mini-tour!

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap031114.html]Cassini Jupiter Portrait

~*~

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap030906.html]Jupiter Unpeeled (and "flattened out" like a hide!)

~*~

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap021207.html]Jupiter, Io and Shadow What a fabulous image; can even make out a few surface features of Io.

~*~

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap020706.html]Io again Truly a picture "worth a thousand words." Looks like it's all color coordinated. :laugh: Lovely.

~*~

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010102.html]Jove, Europa & Callisto Can make out some surface details of Callisto -- albeit small and faint. :up:

~*~

And]http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001212.html]And]http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001212.html]And]http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap001212.html]"And just where do you think you're going, little moon of mine?"

~*~

Cassinis]http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010808.html]Cassinis]http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010808.html]Cassinis]http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap010808.html]Cassini's "farewell" to Jupiter

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-09-21 12:18:09

Those rings and the associated small shepherding moonlets are just endlessly complex!

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … =image]Yep... ... so tiny is Prometheus. Pic taken August 5. Maybe it's my eyes, but I'm not sure I'm seeing the clumps in the F ring the caption mentions. :-\

-

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … mage]Newer image of Rhea ... August 16. Saturn's 2nd largest moon.

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http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … ge]Elegant waves & ribbons -or- get your surfboards out. Hmmm...delicate.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-09-24 07:09:14

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … e]Southern storms

*They're so circular. Saturn freckles. [SP "dot" still looks like a bull's eye.]

-*-

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … ge]Aauuggh!! Enceladus will be crushed! :;):

*Ultraviolet pic. Cassini sure spent a good deal of the summer near the south pole.

-*-

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … age]Saturn as layered cake

"The disturbed boundaries between the bands demonstrate that winds move at different speeds at different latitudes on the gas giant."

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-09-27 08:07:01

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … mage]Those oh-so-lovely rings

*They seem to shimmer. I've mentioned this before, in similar photos. Especially the lighter beige/vanilla/soft lavender-colored areas. Still wanting to imagine actually being there, passing beneath -that-. Thank you, Mother Nature.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-09-30 08:24:45

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … =image]One of the Lords of the Rings

*"The image clearly shows that Prometheus is not round, but instead has an oblong, potato-like shape. The moon was discovered during the Voyager mission, and scientists then noted ridges, valleys and craters on its surface. Hints of its varied topography are present in this view, although Cassini will likely obtain much better images of Prometheus later in the mission."

I think it's cute. :;):

--Cindy

REB · 2004-09-30 08:30:29

Prometheus looks like a UFO, LOL!

I have heard that Saturn would be a godd place to look for old ET hardware. Could it be...naaaaa.

SpaceNut · 2004-10-05 13:35:42

'U' space engineers set sights on Saturn
http://www.michigandaily.com/vnews....b84d6e2

Cassini-Huygens mission arrives at ringed planet after seven-year flight — the result of a collaborative effort between NASA and its European equivalent, the European Space Agency, composed of 17 different nations.

On Dec. 25, the Cassini orbiter will release its Huygens probe for a freefall descent into Titan, the largest of Saturn’s moons.

Marking the beginning of NASA’s “faster, better, cheaper” mission philosophy, Cassini-Huygens still cost a substantial $3 billion. In addition, the orbiter is larger than previous solar system explorers — its fuel source alone is more massive than the Galileo and Voyager spacecrafts combined.

Palomar · 2004-10-07 11:49:54

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … ]Saturnian Hurricane Pic taken September 10. :up:

-*-

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … age]Tethys magnified

-*-

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … mage]Lanes of Air Stunning...wish we had a color pic too!

-*-

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … image]Rhea again

-*-

Stu sent me this space art:
Methane]http://kotisivu.mtv3.fi/spacecadet/spaceart3/methaneocean_of_titan.jpg]"Methane Ocean of Titan"

Thanks Stu! You have good taste in space art (unlike many other people I've known...)

-*-

Also: Cassini-Huygens will fly past Titan on October 26.

--Cindy

P.S.: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/s … Highlights of the tour and "Petal Plot"

Shaun Barrett · 2004-10-07 19:25:02

I'm not sure if this has been posted elsewhere but it gives a very detailed account of how the Huygens mission was saved by a Swede called Boris Smeds.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/pu … html]CLICK HERE

Palomar · 2004-10-11 11:28:27

I'm not sure if this has been posted elsewhere but it gives a very detailed account of how the Huygens mission was saved by a Swede called Boris Smeds.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/pu … html]CLICK HERE

*Interesting article, Shaun.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/cassini- … ml]30-year summers

*Sounds wonderful for the million-year picnic. Some old info, some new (mentions Titan and Huygens). Saturnian storms can rotate around the entire planet, can grow to the size of 30 Earths. Move eastward. Mentions again that Saturn's equatorial winds can be 3 times stronger than equatorial winds on Jupiter, making Saturn the windiest planet. These wind speeds are one of the mysteries they're hoping Cassini will solve.

"Just as Saturn seems like a miniature of our larger solar system, so too may its moons give a glimpse of what might have cooked up closer to the Sun than Saturn."

Love Saturn!

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-10-12 06:06:26

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/cassini/0 … s.html]The cause of the Cassini Division

*Mimas' gravitational influence.

Amazing that such a little moon could produce such a pull; even though the rings aren't greatly "heavy," they do stretch a great distance of course -- and the CD is 2980 miles wide.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-10-14 05:26:08

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/cassini-04zzzh.html]CAPS: New information

*"CAPS had been detecting advance readings for several days before Cassini finally crossed the bow shock that exists in the solar wind ahead of the magnetosphere, a huge magnetic field bubble produced in the solar wind by Saturn's strong magnetic field. On June 28, the spacecraft entered into the magnetosphere itself and began taking data.

From this very preliminary set of measurements, it is apparent that the outer reaches of Saturn's magnetosphere are probably populated by plasma captured from the solar wind, but closer to the planet the plasma comes primarily from the rings and/or the inner icy satellites."

*Mentions CAPS identifying low-energy plasma (previously unknown) "trapped" on magnetic lines "threading" the Cassini Division. Saturn's magnetosphere, etc.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-10-14 11:30:08

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … =image]Eye of the Storm Taken Sept. 9, distance 5.5 million miles away. Sorry, but I just have to say it again -- I can't imagine the true scale of Saturn; it looks THAT big from 5.5 million miles distance!!!

~~~

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … image]Gaps, Rings, Moons Mimas and Epimetheus (have we had a pic of the latter yet? I don't recall...). Cassini division, Encke Gap, Keeler Gap. :up:

~~~

Pulled]http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2.cgi?path=../multimedia/images/saturn/images/PIA06496.jpg&type=image]"Pulled like taffy" also -- "The shadow of Saturn's rings is visible through the thin C ring at upper right."

Cassini is doing an awesome job.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-10-19 20:01:40

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … ge]Streaks on Dione

*Taken September 15; "exhibits some of the interesting bright and dark markings for which it is renowned."

--

Saturns]http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2.cgi?path=../multimedia/images/saturn/images/PIA06500.jpg&type=image]Saturn's waves Seem so delicate...(yeah...anything but)

--

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2. … mage]Moons & Gaps

"This image captures several important targets of the Cassini mission: icy moons, rings, and the gaps in the rings that may contain small undiscovered moons."

Mimas and Epimetheus visible in pic.

--Cindy

Palomar · 2004-10-20 05:00:38

http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.htm … 10]**Titan Flyby Coverage**

*Cassini-Huygens is zipping past Titan next Tuesday, October 26. Will be its closest flyby yet, a mere 745 miles from Titan. :up:

This is a run-down of events NASA is hosting, information, etc.

--Cindy

Shaun Barrett · 2004-10-20 05:27:55

Call me a heretic, if you will, but I have more interest in the moons of Saturn - especially Titan - than its rings. The rings are beautiful and their convoluted shapes are challenging our understanding of the delicate gravitational ballet that forms them. And I certainly will be very interested to hear what the mathematicians and theorists tell us after their analyses are completed but, in the meantime, it's the moons that grab me! (No offense intended toward Ring Enthusiasts, who'll probably see me only as a philistine and an object of pity anyway! )

Apparently, there was some doubt as to how well the cameras aboard Cassini would allow us to discern details of Titan's surface through the atmospheric haze. This concern was described in the September/October 2004 edition of 'The Planetary Report', the bimonthly news magazine of The Planetary Society:-

We were fairly confident we could see the large-scale, 300-kilometer (180-mile) features seen by the ground observers and that we would have greater visibilty of these structures, whatever they might be. But would we be able to see features as fine as the cameras and closest approach distances of the more than 40 Titan flybys could serve up - in some cases, a few tens of meters per pixel? Even in the first Titan flyby, the image scale would be 2 kilometers (1 mile) per pixel. Would we see such detail?
Available models of the Titan atmosphere covered the full range of possibilities between two extremes: on one hand, the total abundance of haze is large, in which case we would do no better than seeing features 100 kilometers (60 miles) in size; on the other hand, the total haze abundance is modest, like a smoggy Los Angeles day, in which case we might see the finest features, assuming they exist (and are of sufficiently high contrast) in the first place. Surface contrast observed through an atmosphere will be reduced by the scattering of light from the airborne haze, and the amount of scattering, and therefore the reduction in observed contrast, depends on the abundance of overlying haze and its vertical distribution. Thus, features on the surface with greater contrast have a greater chance of being seen by a spacecraft cruising overhead.

This then, is how the possible performance of the cameras in the upcoming first Titan flyby were evaluated.
The article later describes what is actually seen:-

One feature immediately grabs all of us - an obvious cloud complex hovering near the south pole as big as the state of Arizona. ....
... With a bit of work, we can also make out a few sinuous features only 10 kilometers wide (6 miles) wide. It is seductive to imagine riverbeds and streams or deep canyons and channels, features perhaps caused by the rain of liquid methane and ethane that Titan theorists have long predicted.. At this stage, however, there is no further evidence to develop this line of imagining into fact. Scientists pride themselves on their discipline and restraint. And so we remain restrained, unsure of what we are observing, ...
However, one thing we can readily offer is the hope that greater detail will be available to us if indeed it exists on the surface at all. The putative visibility limit of 100 kilometers (60 miles) for a large-haze-abundance scenario clearly does not apply to Titan. If we see features 10 kilometers across with the 2-kilometer image scale, then we should be able to see features 100 meters across with the 20-meter image scale that we will have on future Titan flybys.

This early revelation of the haze density in the Titan atmosphere is excellent news for photographic work on future flybys. But it also bodes well for images from the Huygens probe, which may be sending us glorious, clear, panoramic views of an alien landscape in just a few months.
I can't wait!

Palomar · 2004-10-20 10:06:04

Call me a heretic,

*Okay. Heretic. :bars3:

but I have more interest in the moons of Saturn - especially Titan - than its rings. The rings are beautiful and their convoluted shapes are challenging our understanding of the delicate gravitational ballet that forms them. And I certainly will be very interested to hear what the mathematicians and theorists tell us after their analyses are completed but, in the meantime, it's the moons that grab me!

*Lots of my interest is in Saturnian weather. The rings are lovely, of course. And speaking of moons, I'm very curious as to the interplay between Enceladus and the F ring. Saturn as an *entire system* is so compelling...moons, rings, gaps, the globe of Saturn itself with its hurricanes and phenomenal winds. And Titan too, of course; that "cloud complex hovering near the south pole as big as the state of Arizona..." Yep. Can't wait.

Huygens to Titan is just around the corner now. We're already over 200 posts in this thread, but I think it'll be a good idea to wait to create Cassini-Huygens *2* until Huygens is released from Cassini and on its way. What do you all think?

--Cindy

P.S.: http://www.saturntoday.com/news/viewsr. … 39]Cassini Significant Events These reports are available for reading at spaceref.com -- gets down to the nitty-gritty of what's up with Cassini. Good reading.

Oh...and another amateur astronomer and I are still waiting for images of Saturnian lightning! C'mon, Saturn...get with it. Chop-chop! :laugh:

REB · 2004-10-20 10:36:43

I am with you, Shaun. Titan IMO, is the most interesting thing in the Saturn system. I would say Saturn itself comes in a close second.

Titan deserves a place among the planets, in stature.

Palomar · 2004-10-20 10:45:08

I am with you, Shaun. Titan IMO, is the most interesting thing in the Saturn system. I would say Saturn itself comes in a close second.
Titan deserves a place among the planets, in stature.

*To each their own of course.

However, you and Shaun are both solidly pro-terraforming. Is that the main draw for you guys, with respect to Titan (and preference for it over Saturn itself)?

There is a difference of perspective with regards to looking at it (the overall Saturnian system) from the angle of astronomy versus plans for terraforming.

As for Saturn itself coming in a close second... No way, Jose. :;):

A tie, if anything.

--Cindy

SpaceNut · 2004-10-20 11:09:20

News release from Northrop on space inertial reference unit that has operated continuously aboard NASA's Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, which successfully entered orbit around Saturn on June 30, seven years after being launched from Kennedy Space Center. Lots of info on the other equipment and mission goals.

http://www.irconnect.com/noc/press/page … ml?d=65846

New Mars Forums

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#201 2004-09-15 10:07:59

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