Cassino Photo Shows Off Saturn's Rings and Moons
The legendary Cassini spacecraft finished its mission in September last year, but NASA is still releasing Cassini photos, and its latest offering shows Saturn's sharp rings and three tiny moons. The Cassini snapped the photo 1.7 million miles from Saturn on March 13th, 2006.
Cassini launched in 1997 and first arrived at Saturn in 2004. It extended its mission twice, surveying and photographing the planet's surface, rings, magnetosphere, and moon. It orbited the planet until September 2017, when it dove into Saturn's atmosphere in glorious, instructive self-destruction.
Saturn has 62 confirmed moons orbiting around it, many of which have crusts of ice and rock, and some likely contain subterranean oceans. Cassini's latest photo shows moon Mimas "above" the rings, the small Janus in line with the ring, and satellite Tethys below.
With a diameter of 662 miles, Tethys is the largest of the three moons pictured. A crater called Odysseus on Tethys is about the size of Mimas, 246 miles across, whereas Janus has a diameter half the size of about 112 miles.Mimas is illuminated by 'Saturnshine,' NASA explained, aka "sunlight reflected from the planet's cloud tops."
One of Cassini's greatest discoveries was on moon Enceladus, uncovering water, vapor and geysers, and plumes that form only in water, meaning the possibility of nutrients, and maybe even life. While it will be a while before we head off to explore Saturn again, scientists continue to study what Cassini brought back to Earth long after the spaceship's demise.
(via Space)
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