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Cassini Update

Candice Hansen
Published: September 22, 2006

An update on findings from Cassini's latest flyby of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

Candice Hansen, Titan discipline scientist.

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Journey to Ceres
Journey to Ceres
These images from NASA's Dawn spacecraft, located in Vesta's Caparronia quadrangle, in Vesta's northern hemisphere, demonstrate a special analytical technique, which results in shadowed areas of Ve...
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Revealing Shadows 1
Revealing Shadows 1
This true color picture was assembled from Voyager 2 Saturn images obtained August 4, 1981 from a distance of 21 million kilometers (13 million miles) on the spacecraft's approach trajectory. T...
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Saturn, Distant Moons
Tethys may not be tiny by normal standards, but when it is captured alongside Saturn, it can't help but seem pretty small.
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Tethys alongside Saturn
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Rocket trail arcing over Los Angeles.
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Saturn's F ring
Straightening Out the Kinks
+ Unannotated Version NASA’s Cassini spacecraft obtained this image of a feature shaped like a hot cross bun in the northern region of Titan (left) that bears a striking resemblance to a similar...
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NASA’s Cassini spacecraft obtained this image of a feature shaped like a hot cross bun in the northern region of Titan (left) that bears a striking resemblance to a similar feature on Venus (right).
Titan's Hot Cross Bun -- Annotated
Cassini looks toward northern latitudes on Saturn and out across the ringplane. This infrared view probes clouds beneath the hazes that obscure the planet's depths in natural color views. This ima...
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Saturn
Depth Sounding
This brooding portrait shows the southwest limb (edge) of the cold gas giant and the thread-like cloud features lurking there. The limb appears smooth, but at the terminator (the boundary between l...
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Saturn close-up
Pensive Saturn
This map illustrates the planned imaging coverage for the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer, onboard the European Space Agency's Huygens probe during the probe's descent toward Titan's surface on ...
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Black and white image detailing imaging coverage areas planned for the Huygens probe descent.
Go Huygens!
Influence of Mimas October 29, 2004 Full-Res: PIA06509 Mimas, seen here beyond Saturn's rings, is a major sculptor of Saturn's rin...
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Influence of Mimas
Influence of Mimas
This image of Occator Crater on Ceres limb -- long exposure -- was obtained by NASAs Dawn spacecraft on August 14, 2018 from an altitude of about 1149 miles (1849 kilometers).
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Occator Crater on Ceres' Limb -- Long Exposure
Occator Crater on Ceres' Limb -- Long Exposure
Wispy terrain winds across the trailing hemisphere of Saturn's moon Dione in this Cassini view taken during the spacecraft's Jan. 27, 2010 non-targeted flyby.
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Dione
Profiling Dione's Wisps
Canyons and mountain peaks snake along the terminator on the crater-covered, icy moon Dione. With the Sun at a low angle on their local horizon, the line of mountain ridges above center casts shado...
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Dione
Shadows on Ice
This perspective view of Damascus Sulcus was generated using high resolution images of Enceladus acquired in August 2008 at 12 to 30 meters (40 to 100 feet) resolution, together with a new topograp...
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This perspective view of Damascus Sulcus was generated using high resolution images of Enceladus acquired in August 2008 at 12 to 30 meters (40 to 100 feet) resolution, together with a new topographic map of the region produced by Dr. Paul Schenk at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, TX.
Perspective view of Damascus Sulcus, Enceladus
NASA's Dawn spacecraft took this image on June 13, 2016, showing the limb of Ceres from above an equatorial region east of Kirnis Crater.
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Dawn LAMO Image 124
Dawn LAMO Image 124
This false-color mosaic from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows the tail of Saturn's huge northern storm. See Chronicling Saturn’s Northern Storm to learn more about this storm and watch its develop...
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False-color mosaic of the tail of Saturn's huge northern storm
Storm Tail in False Color
Saturn's small moon Daphnis is caught in the act of raising waves on the edges of the Keeler gap, which is the thin dark band in the left half of the image. Waves like these allow scientists to lo...
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Saturn's rings
Small Moon Makes Big Waves
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3-D Image of Grooves and Wrinkles in the South Polar Region
3-D Image of Grooves and Wrinkles in the South Polar Region
The Cassini spacecraft spots a couple of large, wedge-shaped spokes in Saturn's B ring. These spokes are similar in appearance to those seen by the Voyager spacecraft (see Saturn's rings - high r...
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Spokes in Saturn's B ring
Like Spokes of Old
This color view shows two of the largest craters on Saturn's icy moon Tethys: Odysseus in the northern hemisphere and Melanthius in the south. The moon's surface grows notably darker northward of t...
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Tethys and rings
Hue and Contrast
+ Annotated Version This global map of Saturn's moon Mimas was created using images taken during Cassini spacecraft flybys, with Voyager images filling in the gaps in Cassini's coverage. The moon...
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This global map of Saturn's moon Mimas was created using images taken during Cassini spacecraft flybys, with Voyager images filling in the gaps in Cassini's coverage.
Map of Mimas - June 2012 -- Unannotated
While cruising around Saturn in early October 2004, Cassini captured a series of images that have been composed into the largest, most detailed, global natural color view of Saturn and its rings ev...
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Saturn
The Greatest Saturn Portrait...Yet
For the first time, the Cassini spacecraft captures the shadow of Saturn's tiny moon Pandora sneaking onto the planet's main rings. Only a portion of the shadow of Pandora (81 kilometers, or 50 mi...
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For the first time, the Cassini spacecraft captures the shadow of Saturn's tiny moon Pandora sneaking onto the planet's main rings.
Diminutive Debut
Tethys appears to be peeking out from behind Rhea, watching the watcher.
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Tethys and Rhea
Tethys the Spy

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