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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums15 All-Time Best Photos From Cassini 🛑 (large photos)
Wow. Just, wow.
Cassini has been out there hard at work for a long time. The Saturn probe departed Earth in 1997 and spent seven years speeding across the solar system to arrive in orbit around the ringed planet in 2004.
For over 13 years, it's been up there collecting data with an array of spectrometers, magnetometers, radars, and yes, cameras.
While all these types of data are valuable to scientists, it's the images Cassini has been sending back down to Earth that have given the world a much more intimate acquaintance with the beloved ringed planet.
And they're not just about showing us its pretty face, either. With the breathtaking photos Cassini has been taking so far from home, we've been learning new and fascinating things about Saturn, its moons and its rings.
Over the years, here are some of our favourite images of a world so alien to our Earthling experience.
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-cassini-files-our-favourite-photos-from-the-departing-saturn-probe?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1
Full story and lots more photos at the link:
https://www.sciencealert.com/the-cassini-files-our-favourite-photos-from-the-departing-saturn-probe?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1
TeapotInATempest
(804 posts)Pacifist Patriot
(24,654 posts)niyad
(113,581 posts)Delphinus
(11,840 posts)how beautiful - thank you.
annabanana
(52,791 posts)from its plunge.
Baclava
(12,047 posts)http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9710/04/cassini/
Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)Because NASA was going to nuke Jupiter and Saturn.
I also seem to recall a story as well about protestors harassing a delegation of British scientists who were guests of Caltech at the launch.
Duppers
(28,127 posts)Sen. Walter Sobchak
(8,692 posts)Those pictures were incredible: http://ciclops.org/ir_index/3/Jupiter-Encounter
StarryNite
(9,460 posts)Duppers
(28,127 posts)My favorite, I think.
Baclava
(12,047 posts)procon
(15,805 posts)I am so appreciative that science people who have inspired generation with their vision and a hunger for knowledge. Thanks to their persistence, we are able to see this incredible project succeed, even despite the small minded, bean-counting naysayers.
I am so extremely humbled by the scope of everything that awaits us out there. What might we humans discover, what fantastic knowledge is waiting for us? Good speed to the next voyager that we send off into the dark in our unquenchable curiosity to explore where no man has gone before. Thanks too, for the imagination of all the science fiction writers who have let me dream along with them as we traveled to exotic alien worlds that now must pale in comparison to our own incredibly, gorgeous, Saturn.
beam me up scottie
(57,349 posts)Its atoms are part of Saturn now.
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2017/0915-cassini-the-dying-of-the-light.html
Goodnight Cassini, and thanks for all the science.
oasis
(49,410 posts)irisblue
(33,034 posts)have done is push out and look at the stars.