PHOTOS: This year's highlights from Saturn
BY STEPHEN CLARK
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: December 27, 2011
NASA's Cassini spacecraft circling Saturn returned scores of picturesque scenes of the giant planet and its moons in 2011, opening new research horizons and dazzling the public with colorful views of the final frontier.
NASA released color images last week showing Saturn, its methane-rich moon Titan and some of the planet's other rocky satellites. Scientists have discovered 62 moons orbiting Saturn, and many of the moons were found in images returned from the Cassini spacecraft.
Cassini is in an extended mission to study Saturn through 2017, when summer begins in the planet's northern hemisphere.
Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Saturn's third-largest moon Dione can be seen through the haze of its largest moon, Titan, in this view of the two posing before the planet and its rings from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
Saturn's moon Tethys, with its stark white icy surface, peeps out from behind the larger, hazy, colorful Titan in this Cassini view of the two moons. Saturn's rings lie between the two.
The colorful globe of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, passes in front of the planet and its rings in this true color snapshot from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
Saturn's largest moon, Titan, appears deceptively small paired here with Dione, Saturn's third-largest moon, in this view from Cassini.
These views from Cassini look toward the south polar region of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and show a depression within the moon's orange and blue haze layers near the south pole.
MORE PHOTOS FROM SATURN >
|
|
