![]() Titan Larger than Mercury, Titan has an orange, hazy atmosphere that was probably similar to Earth’s before life arose here around 3.5 billion years ago. Caltech in Pasadena manages JPL for NASA. Saturn’s moons In addition to boasting an impressive ring system, Saturn has at least 83 moons, the largest of which are active, planet-like worlds. The Cassini imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, manages the mission for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. Atlas (19 miles, or 30 kilometers across) orbits Saturn just outside the A ring - the outermost of the planet's bright, main rings.Īdditional raw images from Cassini are available at: Appropriately named after the half-man, half-goat satyr from Greek mythology, Pan is nestled in the Encke (pronounced EN-key) Gap within Saturn's A ring. These images are the closest ever taken of Atlas and will help to characterize its shape and geology. 'Were seeing more evidence of how extremely active and dynamic the Saturn ring and moon system is.'. The universe served up a piece of astro-pareidolia last week, when humanity got its first closeup look at Saturn's tiny moon Pan. The flyby had a close-approach distance of about 7,000 miles (11,000 kilometers). On Tuesday (April 12), Cassini snapped the best-ever photos of Saturn's bizarre moon Atlas, whose humped middle and broad equatorial ridge make it look like a flying saucer. resembles the geographic features called pancake domes found on Venus. Order from our online store.These raw, unprocessed images of Saturn's moon, Atlas, were taken on April 12, 2017, by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Titan is the largest moon of Saturn, the second-largest in the Solar System and. The maneuver will make Cassini the first craft to ever explore Saturn’s ring gap, making measurements of the mass of the planet’s rings, probing Saturn’s atmosphere and interior structure, and collecting spectacular imagery.įollow Stephen Clark on Twitter: Exploring the Ringed Planetįind out more about Saturn and its moons in this 196-page special edition from Astronomy Now. The spacecraft will swing by Saturn’s largest moon Titan, covered in rain-replenished lakes of liquid methane and ethane, on April 22 and use gravity to reshape its orbit and begin a series of passages between the planet’s cloud tops and innermost ring. 15 dive into Saturn’s atmosphere to avoid an inadvertent collision with one of the planet’s potentially habitable moons. Running low on fuel, Cassini is in the final months of its mission, heading for a crushing Sept. It's hard to even begin to imagine how strange some of the planets and moons in the outer solar system look. Pan.looks like a fail attempt at a pancake. Scientists believe the equatorial ridges on Pan and Atlas may have formed as the moons collect grains of ice and dust from nearby rings.Ītlas was discovered in 1980 in imagery taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft during its encounter with Saturn, and it orbits around 85,500 miles (137,600 kilometres) from the planet, completing one lap every 14.4 hours. of views from our Cassini spacecraft shows three of Saturns small ring moons: Atlas, Daphnis and Pan. Like Pan, Atlas looks like a miniature version of Saturn, with a bulbous central body and a smooth ridge spanning its equator. The disc-shaped moon is about 19 miles (30 kilometres) across, slightly larger than the moon Pan, which is similar in appearance.Ĭassini took the closest-ever pictures of Pan during a flyby in early March, with its shape drawing comparisons to a walnut or ravioli. One of Saturn’s peculiar moons has received an up-close look from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which sent back the best-ever pictures of Atlas, an object shaped like a flying saucer orbiting just outside the planet’s rings.Ĭassini took the images of Atlas on April 12 as it passed within about 7,000 miles (11,000 kilometres) of the airless moon.Ītlas circles Saturn just outside the A ring, the outermost of the planet’s main, bright rings, according to NASA. The model reproduces a number of observed features of the moonlets-their apparent compositional similarity to the ring. The flyby had a close-approach distance of about 7,000 miles (11,000 kilometers). ![]() ![]() Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute Saturns moon, Atlas, imaged on April 12, 2017, by NASAs Cassini spacecraft. This unprocessed image of Saturn’s moon Atlas was taken on April 12, 2017, by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.
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