The Big Foto » cassini http://thebigfoto.com Life stories in photos Fri, 10 Feb 2012 07:47:56 +0000 en hourly 1 Cassini mission http://thebigfoto.com/cassini-mission http://thebigfoto.com/cassini-mission#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2012 08:13:31 +0000 admin http://thebigfoto.com/?p=2614

“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.”

Carl Sagan

The footage in this little film, by Chriss Abbas, was captured by the hardworking men and women at NASA and The European Space Agency with the Cassini Imaging Science System.

Not all images taken by Cassini are sharp as in photo #1 (check #2 or #3) and it takes several months to be processed(validated/calibrated) and archived in NASA Planetary Data System.

Meanwhile you can explore raw images to find next gems.

]]> http://thebigfoto.com/cassini-mission/feed 0 Saturn from space http://thebigfoto.com/saturn-from-space http://thebigfoto.com/saturn-from-space#comments Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:28:02 +0000 admin http://thebigfoto.com/?p=849 NASA’s Cassini mission has been orbiting Saturn for five Earth years as of June 30, 2009. That’s about one sixth of a Saturnian year, enough time for the spacecraft to have observed seasonal changes in the planet, its moons and sunlight’s angle on the dramatic rings.

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn, along with Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, is classified as a gas giant.

Saturn has a prominent system of rings, consisting mostly of ice particles with a smaller amount of rocky debris and dust. Sixty-one known moons orbit the planet, not counting hundreds of “moonlets” within the rings. Titan, Saturn’s largest and the Solar System’s second largest moon (after Jupiter’s Ganymede), is larger than the planet Mercury and is the only moon in the Solar System to possess a significant atmosphere. [Wikipedia]

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