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Cassini Shows Close Up of Iapetus
dazza101 writes "The Cassini spacecraft passed within 72,000 kms of the Saturn moon Iapetus yesterday, taking a series of spectacular images of this intriguing moons rugged surface. An excellent prelude to what promises to be one of the major stories of the new year, the plunge of the Huygens probe into Titan's atmosphere on January 24."
I have a hard time believing that's a natural formation. And I'm concerned that whatever did it might still be bouncing around the universe somewhere.
Anyone have any idea what could have caused a formation like that?
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Cassini Hyugens sounds like the name of a Scandinavian supermodel or something.
:-(
:-/
And here I was hoping for some spectacular pictures
What do I see? Big round thing with holes. Different, but not the way I imagined
Iapetus: Greek Mythology. A Titan who was the father of Prometheus and Atlas and an ancestor of the human race. Why do we name everything using greek mythology? I mean, sure it sounds cool... but so does foshizzle.
....also many more images if you go straight to the raw feed.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
Did anyone else notice the fact that the main picture looks like any other picture of the earth's moon?
(No, you won't get it if you didn't read the book).
Or, more precisely, the geometric object that crated on mars:
The mars golf ball.
At a guess, it's a glob of molten rock that condensed into a sphere in orbit before hitting the surface again. But that still doesn't make me want to see more detailed photographs and information about it so very, very badly. It would probably be one of the most impressive sights on the Martian surface.
Yikes, everyone take a look at this one:
Amazing detail photo
Can't wait for others of this caliber!!`~ Made me weep!!
(it's a joke son)
Your hybrid is not saving the environment. Its purpose is to make you feel good about buying something.
on second thought, try this server instead. Seems to be moving rather faster than the now /.ed "saturn.jpl.nasa" one.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
http://saturn1.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/ casJPGFullS06/W00003604.jpg
look it made Cassini take LSD!!!
Perhaps what will make this a big story is simply the fact that we're out there, and we're looking at it.
A baby's first steps aren't very interesting in and of themselves, but they're exciting none the less because they're the tell-tale beginnings of greater things to come.
Call me when they find a monolith...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperation between NASA, the European Space Agency and ASI, the Italian space agency.
The Huygens plunge is January 14'th, not the 24'th :) 2 Weeks is hard enough to wait for! :)
Be True, Unbeliever
Heh, if you have a webcam that can withstand solar radiation, temperature extremes, and run for 7 years with no problems, I'd ebay it :P
Be True, Unbeliever
10 Geek points for sucessfully pronouncing "Hyugens"! Bonus if you can also pronounce "Reuters" sucessfully.
Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress at this period in history.
Interesting image. The craters look pretty commonplace--but what caused the ridge? It appears to enclose a low-lying area. The border seems too jagged to be a large crater.
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, Clarke described Iapetus as having a black circle painted on it, with a white circle within.
When one of the Voyager probes photographed Iapetus, a "circular" black area was found with a smaller white area within.
Why is this interesting? 2001 was published in 1968. The Voyager probes didn't visit Jupiter until 1980 (V1) and 1981 (V2).
That's right. All your base.
Actually submitter is right.
The probe does descend into the atmosphere on Jan 14th, but it takes an additional 10 days to photoshop the results.
Take the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should see it as soon as possible - B'Elanna Torres, "Learning Curve"
Isn't Huygens plunging into Titan on Jan 14th??
Also, resolution ain't everything. You can bet that this camera, like the mars landers and unlike your generic handheld digi-camera has a CCD an inch or two wide rather than a few millimetres. Good light sensitivity makes up for a lot. Big chunky pixels in the CCD mean fewer dead black spots from radiation and suchlike as well.
The first look at a moon with its own atmosphere that may resemble the atmosphere of the early Earth?
Not now :-)
It is clear to me that Mimas is actually the Death Star. I wonder if it fully operational?
Oi... if only mod points were as proliferate as the morons in my daily life (LA Drivers) ;).
:P
Obviously this wasn't a failure to check the article (random guesswork) - though it could have been, but rather a simple typo. Not even the machines that run the Slashdot editors are perfect
Be True, Unbeliever
The "biggest story of the new year" refers to Titan, not Iapetus.
It plunges on January 14th, not 24th.
Press Release
--- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
I've noticed in a lot of the images, there appears to be a ring of mountains around most of Iapetus's equator: Here, here and here.
I'm no scientest, but is it possible that this moon once had a ring system like Saturn itself? Over time the ring particles fell out of orbit and formed the mountains along the equator.
...with the probes being crashed into things.
Whatever happened to sending them on their way out the solar system with gold discs in them containing the sounds of Earth and diagrams to show the little green men where to find us?
Oh well, maybe it's just yet another thing George Lucas has to answer for.
Are they particles that are part of Saturn's rings?
(There are also several white dots and a white streak in front of Iapetus, but I assume that they are caused by artifacts, cosmic rays, or transmission problems.)
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Looking at this moon I am really thankfull the earth has an atmosphere, or we would be as poc marked as this moon is.
* Carthago Delenda Est *
Those streaks are stars, making trails as Cassini moves during the long exposure of 82 seconds.
Ah, OK, thanks for the info.
I didn't know about the long exposure times, but I guess that it makes some sense, being so far from the sun and all.
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
Check This out! It looks like a streaking UFO in one of the raw images.
I beleive they may rotate the probe to keep the cameras pointing at the target. If this is the case, then stars may appear as streaks because the camera would be moving relative to the star's angle.
Or, it may just be cosmic rays striking the camera sensors. Happens all the time in space. There is a long exposure from one of the Mars rovers that had streaks all over it due to cosmic rays. Looked like a cyclotron (sp?) image.
Table-ized A.I.
The Huygens probe will enter Titan's atmo on 14 January, NOT the 24th.
Oh shit! We used English time but the Euro
Space Agency used metric time. Damn! There goes
another one.
-NASA-
Table-ized A.I.
That's awesome that the probe will be entering Titan's atmosphere in a couple weeks. I hope it stays alive and chills on the surface for a couple hours.
http://picserver.org/view_image.php/133850U4AXE5/p .jpeg
1280 by 1024, Grayscale. All the detail is on the right side of the screen, with the picture horizontally flipped. Mac users may want to get this file:p .jpeg
http://picserver.org/view_image.php/87BDBMSS2981/
so the detail won't be under the icons. Sure, this could be done by anyone, but I pride myself on my uselessness(es?).
*****
Dear Mary,
I yearn for you tragically,
A.T. Tappman, Chaplain, U.S. Army.
A dreaming god. And it's due to wake up this Friday at 2:00 PM.
Stars? Did you not notice that the big streak is in the middle of the shot of Iapetus? That would mean the 'star' would have had to pass between the camera the moon. I somehow can't see that being the case.