Saturn Stars In Three Hubble Movies

SATURN DAILY

This movie still captures the moons Mimas, Enceladus, and Dione as they begin their race across Saturn's disk. The still is from a movie created from images taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. It reveals the planet's rings tilted nearly edge-on toward the Sun, an event that occurs once every 15 years. Because of this special alignment, the moons cast shadows on the planet and its rings. Dione is on the far left of the image, Mimas is in the middle, and Enceladus is on the right. Dione and Enceladus are casting long shadows on the rings. The "thumbnail" images on the left are frames from the movie that show the moons transiting the planet. The images were taken Nov. 17, 1995 with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2, in blue, green, and red filters.

by Staff Writers
Baltimore MA (JPL) Mar 21, 2007
Photogenic Saturn has now become a movie star. Astronomers have woven NASA Hubble Space Telescope images of Saturn, its rings, and several of its moons into three movies.

Each movie highlights unique times in the planet's 30-year waltz around the Sun. Two of the movies show the motion of several of Saturn's moons when the planet's rings were tilted nearly edge-on to Earth and to the Sun.

These edge-on alignments of the rings occur roughly once every 15 years. Another movie presents a clear view of Saturn's Southern Hemisphere when the planet's rings were at maximum tilt toward Earth.

Hubble snapped only about a dozen images during each of these three events, so astronomers created software to extend the photos into the hundreds of images needed for a movie. The images were taken with Hubble's Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 in 1995 and the Advanced Camera for Surveys in 2003

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SATURN DAILY

Cassini Spacecraft Images Seas Of Titan

Tucson AZ (SPX) Mar 14, 2007
Instruments on NASA's Cassini spacecraft have found evidence for seas, likely filled with liquid methane or ethane, in the high northern latitudes of Saturn's moon Titan. One such feature is larger than any of the Great Lakes of North America and is about the same size as several seas on Earth.

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