Enceladus Lost in the Ring Haze

The tiny but very active moon Enceladus is seen here lost within the E-Ring of Saturn. The moon, as many of us know, is quite active with cryo-volcanic geysers littered throughout the ridges of the “tiger stripes” found mostly in the moon’s southern hemisphere. Since most of the ejecta from Enceladus is jettisoned fast enough to escape the tiny moon’s gravity, most the material winds up orbiting Saturn itself and is therefore helping over a very long period of time to form Saturn’s E-Ring. This at least partly helps solve the question of where Saturn’s massive ring structure originates.

Image by Val Klavans.

The Hexagonal Saturn Storm

This is a raw image of the storm found at the center of Saturn’s hexagonal feature located at it’s northern pole (see below). Be sure to click on it for the high-res.

The image is going to be “officially released” soon, but I don’t know how much better it can get than this. One of the exciting things about this storm is the depth that we are allowed to see into Saturn. There is no other feature on Saturn that allows us to see any further than the cloud tops.

Best of G. Ugarkovic (Last 8 Months)

If you follow this blog on any basis, you might be well aware that a good percentage of the imagery is provided by our good flickr friend Gordan Ugarkovic. Here is a bit of what we missed from him in the last 10 months we were locked out.

Titan at the edge of Saturn taken 2011-05-21. Looks unreal. Like Titan was dropped into the scene using Photoshop. A sin I would never commit. See the lesser “official” NASA version released a few months back here.

Keeping with the theme of moons transiting Saturn. Here is Rhea and tiny Epimetheus doing what they do. Taken in 2010-03-24.

Finally, just to change it up… two moons against Titan, another of Saturn’s moons. Pictured above the Titanian cloud-tops is Dione on the left and Rhea on the right.

Titan’s Polar Vortex

Titan Only a true lover of planetary exploration can get excited about an image like this. Titan is definitely one of the most exciting places in the solar system despite it’s almost total lack of discernible details either surface or in cloud structure. So like Uranus and Venus most images of these locales look something like smooth monochromatic tennis balls without the white lines.

Titan’s polar vortex in color

Above is a color image of the vortex in more detail. Scientists are still unsure of the process that causes this to occur. However, similar phenomenon have been seen before — most notably on Titan’s parent planet, Saturn.

You Are the Center of the Solar System

You Are The Sun is the latest space themed tee by Chop Shop Store. Following on iconic tees that collected various deep space missions and historic Earth orbit missions, this new design draws a new picture of The Solar System as we know it today, complete with Carl Sagan’s pale blue dot.

With your head as a stand-in for The Sun — the tee includes all 8 planets, 7 major moons, The Asteroid Belt and even details little Pluto lost among countless Kuiper Belt objects. We are now providing yet another link here to get it for Men on American Apparel 2001 or Tultex tees and for Women on American Apparel 2102 tees.

Helene Offers a New Mystery

The tiny moon Helene seems to be experiencing some kind of erosion based on new hires images acquired by the Cassini mission in orbit around Saturn. If this is true, this would be quite a mystery considering the moon’s tiny mass and almost total lack of any gravitational ability to shape it’s own surface. Surely this must be coming from external forces such as ring particles being dumped on the surface in one area and then slowly being shaken downslope by small impacts over a very long time. Maybe?

Another color composite by Gordan Ugarkovic.

And a bonus Helene crescent image with posterization effects removed by Wanderingspace.

The Cassini Mission in Stark B&W

CASSINI MISSION from Chris Abbas on Vimeo.

Gorgeous idea — taking the raw images from the Cassini mission and making a long flip-book style movie. Leaving in the flaws and noise of raw images happens to add a nice stylistic touch to the overall feeling of the film. The nature of multiple images taken by the spacecraft often with large and small gaps in time coincidentally makes some engaging jumpy into smooth segments.

The Plumes of Enceladus

Back and front lit plumes This is the best lit image taken of the plumes of Enceladus thus far by Cassini. The moon is lit from the front by Saturnshine and the plumes are being back-lit by the Sun directly behind. A perfect alignment for revealing active geysers on a small moon.

Saturn Still Images Come to Life

If you haven’t followed the work of Stephen v2 and his film “Outside In”, you might want to take a look at what he has in store for us. Using only still images from the Cassini mission, Stephen is making a very impressive tour of the Saturn system without using any CGI, 3D models or textures. While those techniques make great Hollywood films they often fall short of making something that is actually a real place… look real. See below for a very brief clip of how this all ends up looking with a much better and longer clip coming in the near future.

from New "Outside In" clip teaser from stephen v2 on Vimeo.