saturn

[desdemona]

Scientists marvel at photos

BY WILLIAM HARWOOD

STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION

Posted: July 1, 2004

Making gravity visible, close-up images of Saturn's rings shot by NASA's newly arrived Cassini probe revealed an intricate, never-before-seen tapestry of icy particles herded into spiralling density waves by the effects of nearby moons.

Carolyn Porco, leader of the Cassini camera team, a serious Beatles fan and one of the world's leading authorities on Saturn's ring system, was almost at a loss for words describing her initial impressions of the new vistas opened up by Cassini.

"I don't think you have to be a ring scientist to imagine what last night was like to us," she said of the spacecraft's arrival in Saturn orbit and the initial batch of ring pictures beamed back to Earth early today. "It was beyond description, it was mind blowing, it was every adjective you could think of.

entire article here:

http://spaceflightnow.com/cassini/040701science.html

[Malicious Intent]

These pictures are great. They look kind of computer generated.

[Ken]

I'm using this as my desktop.

This is an actual photo, taken when Cassini was pretty far away.

You can see some of the moons if you look closely.

EDIT: On second thought, the resize kind of blacks out the moons.

[Ken]

This is also interesting.

To think Saturn's rings are in decay, and may only last another 100 million years (which is a sort period of time on the grand scale of things.

http://www.voanews.com/article.cfm?objectI...16B5C1305F516B7

[DudeAsInCool]

Cool desktop image, Ken