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Cassini's First Glimpse of Saturn
EccentricAnomaly writes "The Cassini spacecraft has snapped its first picture of Saturn from 177 million miles away. Cassini is due to arrive at Saturn in July 2004, becoming the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn (Pioneer 11 and Voyagers 1 and 2 just did quick flybys of Saturn). Cassini carries the Huygens probe which will land on Saturn's moon Titan in January 2005."
PR, but what's the use? Detailed pics of Saturn and rings, yay, but nothing we don't have. Although, the huygens probe actually looks useful, I think NASA should be more ambitious.
...if the Cassini already flew by Earth?
I remember a few years ago (1997?) that there was a lot of talk about this, because it carried an atomic fuel cell, and it was sopossed to fly by the Earth in some years to gain speed due to the Earth's gravity. Ecologists were going wild because it would come so close to Earth. Well, if it's so close to Saturn it probably means it all went fine.
please excuse my apathy
we talked about this a couple months ago in my astronomy class, they think Titan may have a suitable atmosphere to support human life
I feel guilty every time I boot Windows
Off the otp of my head, I'd have to guess that the stars aren't in that picture for the same reason there are no stars in the pictures from the apollo moon landings. The astronaut's suits were made to be very reflective, and with little to no atmosphere to filter the light from the sun, the astronauts would be very bright. In order to capture the bright object on film, the shutter rate on the camera would have to be set very fast. For this reason the relatively dim stars in the background didn't have time to take their place on the film.This is probably the same for the picture of Saturn. For a real life comparison, imagine looking straight into very bright light (spotlight, etc.), you won't be able to see anything behind it or to it's sides, because the light is so bright. It's somewhat similar to that.
I feel guilty every time I boot Windows
Awesome. I love seeing stuff like this. One day people on earth are going to need to put "Earth" on the last line of their addresses. And we'll have a planet code for earth to dial before the rest of the phone number. Maybe then earth will become more harmonious as people feel there is more to life than their own little world, literally. One day I tells ya!
>> know this is cool and all... but still... we have so many problems on our own earth... shouldn't we solve those first?
....How do I say this??
In my view it's good for mankind that we do stuff like this despite all our little 'tribal warfare' related problems. Maybe, just maybe as more discoveries are made out there, Mankind will embrace a sense of wonder.
If Mankind can become enlightened enough to see that there's a whole universe out there to explore and learn about, maybe fighting over rocks(land) and colored rags(flags) and who's god is better, will take a back seat to a drive to do things for everyone's good.
Like put effort into making discoveries that will cure more diseases, and educate our people further, and give us the foundation we need to jump to the next level.
Can you imagine what we could accomplish if we were all pulling together instead of threatening to nuke the shit out of each other?
We really need to wake up & see that there are bigger and better things than our puny little planet out there.
And if we don't get our act together soon mankind will probably never have the foundation/knowledge to set foot on another planet, or get a suntan from another star.
Myself, I feel really inspired when I see new pictures like this. It makes me want to work harder at what I do, and it makes me wish that we could all stop fighting and go outside and look at the sky.
Huh?
Cassini reminds me of a time that many slashdotters may never have experienced. (I am almost 40)
As a young person in K-12 school NASA projects implied an expectation level of what was possible and expected of engineers. Seeing the results of Apollo, Voyager, and Viking on every magazine and nightly newscast caused me and my friends to assume that every engineering meeting in the USA went something like this...
ProductGuy : Lets put two fully functional chemical analysis and weather observatories on the surface of Mars and send back the data to Earth. We don't have a map of Mars and we will not know where to land them on Mars until we get in orbit.
Engineering Team: OK, lets do it.
It was subtly drilled into our adolescent minds that American Engineering could accomplish anything. And we always noticed the US flag that was in most pictures of the spacecraft and landers.
Today I write software the exact way that Bill Gates wants me to but I am amazed at how everyday I hear from young coders is whining words like "That's hard", "I don't want to", "That will make me have to think." If I had ever responded like that when I was younger the comeback answer was always "We put a man on the moon, surely you can do (insert trivialized task here)".
Cassini reminds me of that 1970's NASA for some reason. Not the NASA that sent a small tinkertoy to Mars in 97 for a few photographs of rocks.
It looks to be a fairly small image, which makes sense as the spacecraft is 177 million miles away from the planet. I think it would be interesting for the spacecraft to take one such picture a day, then put them all together some years later to produce a movie of the spacecraft's mission.
I'm sure it would beat the cgi movies that have been produced of similar journeys.
This is an ex-parrot!