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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."
...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
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
Actually, no. Titan's atmosphere is believed to consist mostly of hydrogen and methane. It would be poisonous and unpleasant for human beings. However, both chemicals are useful organic building blocks, and Titan's surface may resemble a colder version of Earth's primordial soup, which makes it a valuable area for study.
THE GOOD HUMOR MAN CAN ONLY BE PUSHED SO FAR
Bart Simpson on chalkboard in episode 2F18
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!