What would it look like to watch Daphnis fly past?

Maybe something like THIS:

Daphnis by Erik Svensson (All rights reserved)

What a great combination: Daphnis (my favorite moon) and an artist’s interpretation of what it might look like to see it whiz past as it travels around Saturn inside the Keeler Gap, sending up waves in the rings as it goes! The image is by Erik Svensson, who came across my recent article on Universe Today and was reminded of an illustration he’d made a year ago.

After contacting me about it, I felt Erik’s work definitely belonged in the article as well as here on Lights in the Dark!

Read the article on Daphnis here, and see more of Erik’s work here.

Enceladus is Spraying Its Salty Sea Out Into Space

Color-composite of Enceladus spraying into the E ring in 2009 (NASA/JPL/SSI/Gordan Ugarkovic)

Thanks to Cassini we’ve known about the jets of icy brine spraying from the south pole of Saturn’s moon Enceladus for about 8 years now, but this week it was revealed at the 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference outside Houston, Texas that Enceladus’ jets very likely reach all the way down to the sea — a salty subsurface sea of liquid water that’s thought to lie beneath nearly 10 kilometers of ice.

“To touch the jets of Enceladus is to touch the most accessible salty, organic-rich, extraterrestrial body of water and, hence, habitable zone, in our solar system.”

– Cassini imaging team leader Carolyn Porco

Read the rest of this story here.

Highlighting Rhea’s Subtle Colors – New Cassini Images of Saturn’s Moon

Color-composite of Rhea (NASA/JPL/SSI/J. Major)

This is a color composite image of Rhea (pronounced REE-ah) I made from raw images acquired by the Cassini spacecraft on March 9, 2013, during its most recent — and final — close pass of the moon. The visible-light colors of Rhea’s frozen surface have been oversaturated to make them more apparent… even so, it’s still a very monochromatic place.

That’s No Space Station, It’s a MOON!

First Alderaan, then Prometheus?? Here we go again!

Saturn’s moon Mimas looks uncannily like the Death Star, and this animation by Diamond Sky Productions makes the resemblance even more apparent. Now witness the power of this fully-armed battle station!

(No shepherd moons were harmed in the making of this video.)

See the original post from 2006 (yes, it’s an oldie) on the CICLOPS site and read more about Mimas here.

Floes of Frozen Methane May Be Floating on Titan’s Lakes

Artist’s rendering of an ice-covered lake surface on Titan (NASA/JPL-Caltech/USGS)

Although surface temperatures on Titan are cold enough that methane can exist as a liquid, filling lakes and flowing in streams, it may sometimes get so cold that even the liquid methane and ethane freezes, forming floes and icebergs of frozen hydrocarbons. This Titanic revelation was announced today during the 221st American Astronomical Society meeting in Long Beach, CA.

Ghosts of Worlds Passed

Animation of Saturn’s F ring and shepherd moons

Saturn’s F ring is a fascinating structure. Made of fine icy particles — most no larger than the particulates found in cigarette smoke — it orbits Saturn just outside the A ring and is easily perturbed by the gravity of nearby moons and embedded moonlets, which create streamers and clumps that rise up in fanciful shapes.

This brief animation, made from 33 raw images captured by Cassini on December 26 (otherwise known locally as my birthday!) shows the F ring in action as it follows shepherd moons Prometheus and smaller Atlas around Saturn. Some motion is due to the orbits of the rings and moons, and some is due to the spacecraft itself.

You can watch a slower version of the animation below:

Cassini’s Christmas Gift: a Peek at Prometheus

Potato-shaped Prometheus on one of its countless trips around Saturn

Captured on Christmas Day, this is a raw image from Cassini showing Saturn’s F ring buckling inwards at two places due to the gravitational tug of its inner shepherd moon, Prometheus, seen at center.

As the irregularly-shaped moon approaches the ring material in its looping orbit around Saturn it draws material from the ring in towards itself, warping and stretching the fine icy ring particles into waving streamers that eventually settle back into place. It’s a very visual demonstration of gravity at work!

At its widest Prometheus is about 92 miles (148 km) across but only 42 miles (68 km) in width. It orbits Saturn once every 14.7 hours.

Raw image: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute