Nasa's Cassini spacecraft will take a picture of Earth from a distance of hundreds of millions of miles on July 19, 2013. We take a look back at some of the images the spacecraft has sent back to Earth on its incredible mission into space. Above, the Cassini spacecraft sent back this image on August 29, 2012 of Saturn’s indigo and ochre hues undergoing a seasonal change. When Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004, the planet’s northern hemisphere was bathed in azure blue, but as the years have passed, spring has begun in the Northern hemisphere. The blue has begun to fade, migrating south where winter is fast approaching, as shown in this natural-colour image of the gas giant and its largest moon Titan.
Cassini drifted into Saturn's shadow for about 12 hours in 2006 and looked back toward the eclipsed Sun. Cassini saw a view unlike any other. First, the night side of Saturn is seen to be partly lit by light reflected from its own majestic ring system. Next, the rings themselves appear dark when silhouetted against Saturn, but quite bright when viewed away from Saturn, slightly scattering sunlight, in this exaggerated colour image. Saturn's rings light up so much that new rings were discovered, although they are hard to see in the image. Seen in spectacular detail, however, is Saturn's E ring, the ring created by the newly discovered ice-fountains of the moon Enceladus and the outermost ring visible above. Far in the distance, at the left, just above the bright main rings, is the almost ignorable pale blue dot of Earth.
The Cassini-Huygens mission captured this view of Saturn's moons Titan (L) and Tethys partially obscured by the planet's rings
Cassini spacecraft tracks the aftermath of a massive storm on Saturn
Scientists with Nasa's Cassini mission spotted two features shaped like the 1980s video game icon Pac-Man on moons of Saturn. One was observed on the moon Mimas in 2010 and the latest was observed on the moon Tethys.
On Oct. 5, 2008, just after coming within 25 kilometers (15.6 miles) of the surface of Enceladus, Nasa's Cassini captured this stunning mosaic as the spacecraft sped away from this geologically active moon of Saturn.
A spinning vortex of Saturn's north polar storm resembling a deep red rose of giant proportions surrounded by green foliage. Measurements have sized the eye at a staggering 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) across with cloud speeds as fast as 330 miles per hour (150 meters per second).
The Titan 4B rocket lifts off from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying the two-story, $3.4 billion Cassini spacecraft enroute to the planet Saturn October 15, 1997. The space probe carried 72 pounds of plutonium.
Saturns outer C and inner B rings respectively from left to right, with the inner B ring beginning a little more than halfway across the image. The general pattern is from dirty red particles to the denser ice shown in turquoise as the ringlets spread outward. Such information hints at the origin and evolution of the rings, according to scientists at the University of Colorado at Boulder who are involved in the mission managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. This image was made by a $12.5 million instrument called the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph, known as UVIS for short, that was built at Boulder.
Saturn eclipse - Cassini orbiter spacecraft, 2006
A 'raw', unprocessed image of Saturn's moon Rhea. The camera was pointing toward Rhea from a distance of approximately 42,096 kilometres (26,157 miles).
Two of Saturn's moons, Prometheus and Pan, are caught herding their respective rings. The bright dot near the inner edge of the Encke gap is a background star. The image was taken in visible violet light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Sept. 18, 2012. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) from Pan.
Cassini spacecraft, April 2, 2012 Nasa’s Cassini spacecraft has taken its fair share of images of Titan in its time at the Ringed Planet, but this surely has to rank as one of the best. This beautiful colour image showing Saturn’s largest moon sitting against the blackness of space was taken when Cassini was roughly 191,000km from it.
This nightime view of Saturn's north pole was taken by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer onboard the Cassini orbiter. It clearly shows a bizarre six-sided hexagon feature encircling the entire north pole.
Just amazing! :)
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