23 Dec 2013 - Cassini Sees Saturn and Moons in Holiday Dress

[NASA]

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/images/miss-cassini-mp.jpg (http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/display.cfm?News_ID=45971)23 Dec 2013 - Cassini Sees Saturn and Moons in Holiday Dress
This holiday season, feast your eyes on images of Saturn and two of its most fascinating moons, Titan and Enceladus, in a care package from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.


More... (http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/display.cfm?News_ID=45971)

[Tesla_WTC_Solution]

Their page is messy - lol - I tried to check out the pictures and it wasn't very straightforward...

Enceladus ejects a big stream of water toward Saturn - there are geysers of water coming from its south pole.
This accounts for lots of the water vapor in the system :)

Titan is the moon recently mapped (well, part of one pole) by Cassini and NASA workers using a photo technique from Mars work.
They found lakes of Methane on the surface of this moon that are as vast and deep as Lake Michigan.
There is 40x the amount of fuel on Titan as we have discovered on Earth, if I understand correctly.

[davyj0nes]

Pretty planet. :nod:



http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/jpeg/PIA17176.jpg

[Milneman]

That's bloody brilliant!!!

[OnyxKnight]

I hope they take a peak inside one of those lakes with a Titan analogue of the Roverbot. There's plenty to see there. Most of the pictures taken though, so far, seem to be of more arid areas of the planet. I'm willing to go off on the prospect that this may also be deliberate too. Compared would be to take a picture of Earth of the north or south pole, or Sahara / Gobi. Nobody would think there's life here, though speculations may rise because of high oxygen content and water presence.

Enceladus is more of a mystery.

[davyj0nes]

Titan (http://www.ciclops.org/view/7768/Lakes-Through-the-Haze)

Using a special spectral filter, the high-resolution camera aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft was able to peer through the hazy atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan. It captured this image, which features the largest seas and some of the many hydrocarbon lakes that are present on Titan's surface. Titan is the only place in the solar system, other than Earth, that has stable liquids on its surface. In this case, the liquid consists of ethane and methane rather than water. An annotated version of the image indicates the names assigned to the visible features. Titan's largest sea is Kraken Mare.



http://s3.amazonaws.com/ciclops_ir_2013/7768_18617_1.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=14V1KFXK26R9EA1V0Q02&Expires=1387949206&Signature=sHALwCkVZIV%2FhZO1qO3cdXO3yFQ%3D

[davyj0nes]

Enceladus (http://www.ciclops.org/view/7786/A-Snowball-in-Space)

Saturn's moon Enceladus, covered in snow and ice, resembles a perfectly packed snowball in this image from NASA's Cassini mission. Cassini has imaged Enceladus many times throughout its mission, discovering a fractured surface and the now-famous geysers that erupt icy particles and water vapor from fractures crossing the moons' 200-mile-wide (300-kilometer-wide) south polar terrain.


http://s3.amazonaws.com/ciclops_ir_2013/7786_18590_1.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=14V1KFXK26R9EA1V0Q02&Expires=1387949387&Signature=bVwDaUGPI%2FOrm4Qs2YA13kLPEwA%3D

Enceladus (http://www.ciclops.org/view.php?id=6023)

Dramatic plumes, both large and small, spray water ice out from many locations along the famed "tiger stripes" near the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The tiger stripes are fissures that spray icy particles, water vapor and organic compounds.


http://s3.amazonaws.com/ciclops_ir_2009/6023_14195_1.jpg?AWSAccessKeyId=14V1KFXK26R9EA1V0Q02&Expires=1387949471&Signature=KaxEY%2BbIeV5ODx3%2FB5tRnYkJg24%3D