Rings, Dark Side of Saturn Glow in New Cassini Image

Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Rings, Dark Side of Saturn Glow in New Cassini Image

Rings, Dark Side of Saturn Glow in New Cassini Image:

This colorized mosaic from NASA's Cassini mission shows an infrared view of the Saturn system, backlit by the sun, from July 19, 2013. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona/Cornell
› Full image and caption

October 17, 2013

Story Highlights:

• The Cassini spacecraft scanned across Saturn and its rings when the sun was behind the planet and faint rings were easier to detect.

• This latest infrared image shows a strip about 340,000 miles (540,000 kilometers) across that includes the planet and its rings out to Saturn's second most distant ring.

PASADENA, Calif. -- The gauzy rings of Saturn and the dark side of the planet glow in newly released infrared images obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

"Looking at the Saturn system when it is backlit by the sun gives scientists a kind of inside-out view of Saturn that we don't normally see," said Matt Hedman, a participating scientist based at the University of Idaho, Moscow, Idaho. "The parts of Saturn's rings that are bright when you look at them from backyard telescopes on Earth are dark, and other parts that are typically dark glow brightly in this view."

The images are available at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=pia17468 and
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=pia17469 .

It can be difficult for scientists to get a good look at the faint outer F, E and G rings, or the tenuous inner ring known as the D ring when light is shining directly on them. That's because they are almost transparent and composed of small particles that do not reflect light well. What's different about this viewing geometry?

• When these small particles are lit from behind, they show up like fog in the headlights of an oncoming vehicle.

• The C ring also appears relatively bright here; not because it is made of dust, but because the material in it -- mostly dirty water ice -- is translucent. In fact, in the 18th and 19th centuries, it was known as the "crepe ring" because of its supposed similarity to crepe paper.

• The wide, middle ring known as the B ring -- one of the easiest to see from Earth through telescopes because it is densely packed with chunks of bright water ice -- looks dark in these images because it is so thick that it blocks almost all of the sunlight shining behind it.

Infrared images also show thermal, or heat, radiation. While a visible-light image from this vantage point would simply show the face of the planet as dimly lit by sunlight reflected off the rings, Saturn glows brightly in this view because of heat from Saturn's interior.

In a second version of the image, scientists "stretched" or exaggerated the contrast of the data, which brings out subtleties not initially visible.

• Structures in the wispy E ring -- made from the icy breath of the moon Enceladus -- reveal themselves in this exaggerated view.

"We're busy working on analyzing the infrared data from this special view of the Saturn system," said Phil Nicholson, a visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team member from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. "The infrared data should tell us more about the sizes of the particles which make up the D, E, F and G rings, and how these sizes vary with location in the rings, as well as providing clues as to their chemical composition."

Launched in 1997, Cassini has been exploring the Saturn system for more than nine years with a suite of instruments that also includes visible-light cameras, ultraviolet and infrared spectrometers, as well as magnetic field and charged particle sensors. Scientists working with the visible light cameras are still busy putting together and analyzing their mosaic -- or multi-image picture -- of the Saturn system.

"Cassini's long-term residency at the ringed planet means we've been able to observe change over nearly half a Saturn-year (one Saturn-year is equal to almost 30 Earth-years) with a host of different tools," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist, based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Earth looks different from season to season and Saturn does, too. We can't wait to see how those seasonal changes affect the dance of icy particles as we continue to observe in Saturn's rings with all of Cassini's different 'eyes.'"

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The California Institute of Technology in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA. The VIMS team is based at the University of Arizona in Tucson.

For more information about the Cassini mission, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

Jia-Rui Cook 818-354-0850

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

jccook@jpl.nasa.gov

2013-297

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The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. President Dwight D. Eisenhower established the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958 with a distinctly civilian (rather than military) orientation encouraging peaceful applications in space science. The National Aeronautics and Space Act was passed on July 29, 1958, disestablishing NASA's predecessor, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). The new agency became operational on October 1, 1958.

UFO SIGHTINGS PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a UFO as "An unidentified flying object; a 'flying saucer'." The first published book to use the word was authored by Donald E. Keyhoe. The acronym "UFO" was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, who headed Project Blue Book, then the USAF's official investigation of UFOs. He wrote, "Obviously the term 'flying saucer' is misleading when applied to objects of every conceivable shape and performance. For this reason the military prefers the more general, if less colorful, name: unidentified flying objects. UFO (pronounced Yoo-foe) for short." Other phrases that were used officially and that predate the UFO acronym include "flying flapjack", "flying disc", "unexplained flying discs", "unidentifiable object", and "flying saucer". The phrase "flying saucer" had gained widespread attention after the summer of 1947. On June 24, a civilian pilot named Kenneth Arnold reported seeing nine objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier. Arnold timed the sighting and estimated the speed of discs to be over 1,200 mph (1,931 km/h). At the time, he described the objects' shape as being somewhat disc-like or saucer-like, leading to newspaper accounts of "flying saucers" and "flying discs". In popular usage the term UFO came to be used to refer to claims of alien spacecraft. and because of the public and media ridicule associated with the topic, some investigators prefer to use such terms as unidentified aerial phenomenon (or UAP) or anomalous phenomena, as in the title of the National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP).

UFO PHOTO PHOTOGRAPHY

UFO - Unidentified Flying Object An unidentified flying object, or UFO, in its most general definition, is any apparent anomaly in the sky that is not identifiable as a known object or phenomenon. Culturally, UFOs are associated with claims of visitation by extraterrestrial life or government-related conspiracy theories, and have become popular subjects in fiction. While UFOs are often later identified, sometimes identification may not be possible owing to the usually low quality of evidence related to UFO sightings (generally anecdotal evidence and eyewitness accounts). Stories of fantastical celestial apparitions have been told since antiquity, but the term "UFO" (or "UFOB") was officially created in 1953 by the United States Air Force (USAF) to serve as a catch-all for all such reports. In its initial definition, the USAF stated that a "UFOB" was "any airborne object which by performance, aerodynamic characteristics, or unusual features, does not conform to any presently known aircraft or missile type, or which cannot be positively identified as a familiar object." Accordingly, the term was initially restricted to that fraction of cases which remained unidentified after investigation, as the USAF was interested in potential national security reasons and/or "technical aspects" (see Air Force Regulation 200-2). During the late 1940s and through the 1950s, UFOs were often referred to popularly as "flying saucers" or "flying discs". The term UFO became more widespread during the 1950s, at first in technical literature, but later in popular use. UFOs garnered considerable interest during the Cold War, an era associated with a heightened concern for national security. Various studies have concluded that the phenomenon does not represent a threat to national security nor does it contain anything worthy of scientific pursuit (e.g., 1951 Flying Saucer Working Party, 1953 CIA Robertson Panel, USAF Project Blue Book, Condon Committee).

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Photos of Nature | Nature Photography What is The Universe

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