Monthly Archives: November 2005

After a planetary spacecraft is successfully launched on its long journey to its target planetary object, the various teams involved in the mission must checkout the instruments and subsystems they provided. This usually involves taking images to verify that everything … Continue reading →

Cassini flew by Rhea yesterday in an effort to better understand the heavily cratered world with wispy terrain similar to the ice cliffs and fractures of Dione. The image above shows the planned image coverage as Cassini passed only 500 … Continue reading →

Social bookmarking, tagging, and editing have helped launch Web 2.0, or whatever you want to call it. This is a phenomena few if anyone accurately predicted. Except that Vernor Vinge predicted it quite accurately in 1999 with his Hugo Award … Continue reading →

Ymir, Suttung, Thrym, Mundilfari, Narvi, Tarvos, Siarnaq, Erriapo, Albiorix, Skadi, Paaliaq, Ijiraq, Kiviuq, and 12 more unnamed… In the outer reaches of the Saturnian system lie at least 26 tiny moons. 25 of these remain faint lights in the sky, … Continue reading →

The excitement of scientists upon Cassini-Huygens entering the Saturnian System was reserved mostly for Titan, Saturn itself, and its rings. That the other moons might be something more than cratered and dead ice bodies was hardly expected. Enter Iapetus. This … Continue reading →

There is a poster-sized image displayed on a board in the public-accessible lobby of the Charles P. Sonnett Space Sciences Building on the University of Arizona campus that correctly portrays Hyperion as one of the reddest objects in our solar … Continue reading →

Titan, the largest of the Saturnian moons, with the thick planet-like atmosphere. The moon with the Earth-like surface, of deeply cut fluid channels, broad sea-like basins, pebbled channel beds, lakes, wind-driven sediments, and occasional craters. The alien moon with water … Continue reading →

Rhea might otherwise be the most boring of the Saturnian moons, what with its ancient craters, airless surface, and lack of any recent activity. But therein lies the mystery. Why are there two distinct regions of craters, suggesting an early … Continue reading →

Somewhere in the raw image above, perhaps the tiny dot in the lower right, may be Polydeuces, a tiny moon discovered by Cassini-Huygens and announced on February 24, 2005 with the following from a mission news report: “Another discovery was … Continue reading →

The beautiful wispy terrain on Dione has long tantalized planetary scientists looking over low resolution images of the moon. When Cassini flew by Dione in December 16, 2004 it revealed the wisps to be bright ice cliffs created by the … Continue reading →