Cassini mission tagged posts

These raw, unprocessed images of Saturn’s moon Pan was taken on March 7, 2017 by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

New raw, unprocessed images of Saturn’s tiny moon, Pan, were taken on March 7, 2017, by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. The flyby had a close-approach distance of 24,572 kilometers (15,268 miles).
These images are the closest images ever taken of Pan and will help to characterize its shape and geology.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the mission for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington...

Saturn’s B ring is the most opaque of the main rings, appearing almost black in this Cassini image taken from the unlit side of the ringplane. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

It seems intuitive opaque material should contain more stuff than a more translucent substance. But this does not always apply, according to a recent study of the rings using data from NASA’s Cassini mission. Saturn’s B ring is the brightest and most opaque of Saturn’s rings, and are consistent with previous studies that found similar results for Saturn’s other main rings.

Some parts of Saturn’s B ring are up to 10 times more opaque than the neighboring A ring, but the B ring may weigh in at only two to three times the A ring’s mass. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

While opacity of B ...