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Rare Full Moon on Christmas Day

Image of full moon
Source: NASA/Goddard/Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
Published: December 17, 2015

This image of the Moon was created with images taken by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter.

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Diagram showing the trajectory of Cassini close Enceladus flybys
Cassini's Closest Enceladus Fly-bys from the Prime and Equinox Missions
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Saturn's clouds
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Odysseus on Tethys
Odysseus Out of Shadow
This magnified view illustrates the general orientation of the "propeller" features in Saturn's rings as they orbit the planet. The propellers are features detected in Cassini images that reveal th...
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A mmagnified view of the general orientation of the
Propeller Motion
The flattened, potato-like form of Prometheus glides silently within the Roche Division, between Saturn's A and F rings. Prometheus (86 kilometers, or 53 miles across at its widest point) is on th...
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Prometheus and Saturn's rings
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This map is a mosaic of images obtained by NASA's Dawn's framing camera during the high-altitude mapping orbit phase. This map shows the distribution of dark materials on the surface of asteroid Ve...
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Map of Dark Materials on Vesta
Map of Dark Materials on Vesta
+ View Full Res + PIA12111 (July 2009) This image was obtained by Cassini's radar instrument during a flyby on July 8, 2009. The radar antenna was pointing toward Titan at an altitude of 965 kilo...
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Titan
Titan Radar Swath (T-36 Flyby - Aug. 7, 2009)
Saturn's C ring is home to a surprisingly rich array of structures and textures. In this image, a bright and narrow ringlet located toward the outer edge of the C ring is flanked by two broader fea...
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Saturn's C ring
So Long, C Ring
The Cassini spacecraft looks past Saturn's main rings to spy the tiny moon Atlas, which orbits between the main rings and the thin F ring. The main rings are closer to the spacecraft than Atlas is...
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The Cassini spacecraft looks past Saturn's main rings to spy the tiny moon Atlas, which orbits between the main rings and the thin F ring.
Atlas in the Distance
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Signs of activity on both sides of the Roche Division
From A to F
The Cassini spacecraft snapped this high-resolution image of Saturn's small moon Epimetheus during the spacecraft's non-targeted flyby on April 7, 2010. The view was obtained at a distance of appr...
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Epimetheus
Epimetheus Close-Up
Craters cover the rugged surface of Saturn's moon Janus. The view is from 42 degrees above the moon's equator. North on Janus (179 kilometers, or 111 miles across) is towards the top of the image....
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Saturn's moon Janus
Ragged Crescent
Like the lengthy story of its Greek king namesake, the humongous Odysseus impact basin stretches on and on across Tethys. The 450-kilometer (280-mile) wide Odysseus is a well-preserved example of ...
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The leading hemisphere of Tethys
Icy Crown on Tethys
The Cassini spacecraft looks down under at the tortured south polar region of Enceladus, crossed by its "tiger stripes," or sulci, as the long, nearly parallel fractures are officially known. The u...
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Enceladus
Icy Outpost?
This image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft of asteroid Vesta shows Eusebia crater, which is the large crater in the top right of the image.
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Eusebia Crater
Eusebia Crater
The Cassini spacecraft and Huygens probe begin their seven-year journey to the ringed planet. The successful launch of Cassini aboard a Titan IVB/Centaur occured at 4:43 a.m. EDT, October 15, 1997.
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Clearing the Tower
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+ View Full Res This image was obtained by Cassini's radar instrument during a flyby on May 21, 2009. The radar antenna was pointing toward Titan at an altitude of 965 kilometers (599 miles) durin...
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Titan
Titan Radar Swath (T-55 Flyby - May 21, 2009)
Squinting at this view of Saturn's rings reveals not one but two of the four narrow ringlets in the Encke Gap (325 kilometers, or 200 miles, wide). The innermost of the two ringlets is much brighte...
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a view of four narrow ringlets in the Encke Gap
Clumps for Encke
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N00027998.jpg
N00027998.jpg
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A visual and infrared mapping spectrometer image of Saturn's moon Enceladus
Tiger Stripes are Cubs
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Dawn LAMO Image 81
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Titan
Titan flyby -- Sept. 23, 2006 (raw image)
Cassini takes in a wide-angle view of majestic, golden-hued Saturn ... home to our robotic spacecraft for two years now. The ringplane cuts across the center of Saturn's crescent which wears shadow...
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These false-color mosaics from NASA's Cassini spacecraft chronicle the changing appearance of the huge storm that developed from a small spot in Saturn's northern hemisphere.
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