Greetings to All You Fellow Cassini Travelers!

Carolyn PorcoCarolyn Porco

Cassini Imaging Team Leader

 

I’m very happy to report that we’ve just put one more major milestone in this remarkable adventure successfully behind us.

 

Another bold dip over the south pole of Enceladus and another skillful setup for imaging the moon ‘on the fly’ have brought us another bounty of positively glorious views of one of the most fabulous places in the solar system.

 

EnceladusOn this run, we have captured, by design, jet source regions we didn’t catch the first time:  sources VI (see https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia11134.html )

and VII ( see https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia11127.html ) on and near the Baghdad tiger stripe, and we repeated our imaging of II and III on Damascus.  In all, we’ve now seen at very high resolution (tens of meters per pixel) sources I, II, III, V, VI, and VII.  (See http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/?IDNumber=pia08385

 for a map of these locales).   And of course, as before, we note that the region of the active tiger stripes is finely-fractured throughout and littered with icy blocks.

 

Our next flyby of Enceladus, as you may know, is not for another year. The sun will be disappearing from the south pole throughout that time, so that by next year we will have a far dimmer view of a shrinking portion of the south polar terrain. So, take your fill of this fabulous place now, because it will be a very, very long time before you see it like this again.

 

Here are three more images we posted from yesterday’s flyby:

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia11125.html

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia11124.html

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia11108.html

 

Cassini Begins To Transmit Science ‘Treats’ Home

Amanda HendrixAmanda Hendrix
Cassini scientist on the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (bio)

Just in time for Halloween, Cassini does not disappoint and successfully begins to transmit a bag of “science” goodies home. And just like when I was a kid looking through my bag of candy after a long night of trick or treating . . . tonight will be the same as scientists around the country begin to pour over their treats, or in this case data captured on this, our last flyby this year of Saturn’s icy moon, Enceladus.  The excitement and joy is relived all over again each time we fly by.  What treats and treasures await?  I can’t wait to find out!

 

The downlink will run through the evening.  Raw images may pop up on the Web site early tomorrow: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/index.cfm Just click on the latest images icon . . . or you might select Enceladus from the drop down menu.

–Amanda