Saturn's beautiful moons

Saturn has a whole variety of moons, many of which look very different, and all look beautiful. Cassini spacecraft has been snapping some great views of those moons, giving us a very close look at that system. I've been trawling the raw Cassini images archive for moon images that were taken through red, green, and blue filters, because that allows to combine them into a true-colour image, as if it were snapped by an astronaut with a consumer camera.

Here are some of the images I created: postimg.org...

Dione, the "whispy" moon


Dione and Tethys


Enceladus, covered in pure ice


Hyperion, the "sponge" moon


Hyperion looks somewhat more colourful if you include infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths:


Iapetus, the "wallnut" moon


Rhea, the second largest moon of Saturn


Mimas and Saturn's outer rings


Rhea, being dwarfed by Titan, Saturn's largest moon


Yesterday, the Cassini spacecraft made its last close flyby of Hyperion, so we should see some great close-up images of that moon soon. www.jpl.nasa.gov...

Check out the great series of threads "Strange Moons" by eriktheawful for more pictures and interesting information:
Enceladus
Hyperion
Iapetus
and several more such threads, just search ATS for "Strange Moons"

"That's no Moon"
-- Obi Wan "Ben" Kenobi


Well, it is a moon -- Mimas.

Absolutely stunning. Cassini is one of mans greatest creations. Beautiful craft, beautiful images.

Check out the ionised jets coming from Enceladus

Enceladus jets

a reply to: wildespace

Encelladus! That's where we should explore............

originally posted by: lostbook
a reply to: wildespace

Encelladus! That's where we should explore............

Yes, there are already several mission planned for Enceladus and Titan. In 2021, at least three missions are possible: "Journey to Enceladus and Titan" (JET), "Life Investigation For Enceladus" (LIFE) and "Enceladus Life Finder" (ELF). These are confirmed in 2016 if they are accepted. Gotta love those acronyms.

Actually, Titan is even more interesting, it's thought to be very similar to young Earth. It has dense atmosphere, which is mostly nitrogen, like Earth's. It doesn't have oxygen though, 98,4% of it's atmosphere is nitrogen, rest is methane and hydrogen. It has weather features like Earth, like wind and rain, which creates dunes, rivers, lakes, seas and deltas and it has seasons like Earth. But instead of water cycle, Titan has methane cycle. Methane evaporates, forms clouds, rains down and so on. Instead of water seas, it has hydrocarbon seas. Organic haze makes the surface invisible to visible light.

And when Sun turns into Red Giant, we can move to Titan, as it's temperatures turn high enough for liquid water and it turns very Earth-like as it's organic haze will deplete, methane's concentration rises and Sun's light first time touches the moon's surface.

The spacecraft that just keeps giving.

Maybe ATS should add a couple of the moons, or at least Titan, into the graphic to the left of the title of the page.

originally posted by: Aleister
The spacecraft that just keeps giving.

Agreed. Plus its oddly satifying to say the name Cassini.

Those are great pictures. I always wonder why the stars aren't visible on NASA pictures, let's say they do it to bring the objects in clearer view.

It's almost if hyperion is an old trapped comet around Saturn .. you can see the ice very clearly, nice comparison to the Ceres ice mystery.

It also amazes me that the rings of Saturn who are only thirty feet thick show so much density,what would happen if a satellite flies through these rings with a amount of speed collecting material and how long will it take for Saturn to repair these rings? what a sight seeing it would be if you could be there one day..

Thanks for posting.

originally posted by: 0bserver1
Those are great pictures. I always wonder why the stars aren't visible on NASA pictures.

The objects being photographed are relatively bright, so the exposure times do not need to be set very high. For a star to show up on a picture, the camera's exposure time needs to be higher than they were for these images.

For example, if you had a camera that you could manually set the shutter speed for daylight photography, and then tried to take a picture of a starry night sky with that camera, those stars would not show up in the picture, even if you could see the stars with your naked eye (expect for maybe the brightest of them).

Granted, in the case of Saturn and its moons, it does receive less sunlight due to being farther from the sun, but it is still relatively bright.

a reply to: wildespace

I don't know why but that large picture of Rhea resonates with me. It's absolutely stunning. I guess it makes me think of how our Moon must have looked a long time ago.

Humankind needs to get its priorities together! We need to pool our global resources & make space travel a cheap reality for all people! I soooooo want to look out the window & see these beautiful objects in person.

originally posted by: Thebel
But instead of water cycle, Titan has methane cycle. Methane evaporates, forms clouds, rains down and so on. Instead of water seas, it has hydrocarbon seas. Organic haze makes the surface invisible to visible light.

And when Sun turns into Red Giant, we can move to Titan, as it's temperatures turn high enough for liquid water and it turns very Earth-like as it's organic haze will deplete, methane's concentration rises and Sun's light first time touches the moon's surface.

Titan is even weirder, as water ice on that moon acts as rock does on Earth: Titan's surface, its mountains, valleys, rocks and boulders, and even sand... are composed of waster ice rather than minerals.

Titan has helluvalot of water, even more than we have on Earth. So I think that when the Sun goes red giant and warms Titan up enough to melt the ice, it will turn into a water planet.

originally posted by: enlightenedservant
a reply to: wildespace

I don't know why but that large picture of Rhea resonates with me. It's absolutely stunning. I guess it makes me think of how our Moon must have looked a long time ago.

Humankind needs to get its priorities together! We need to pool our global resources & make space travel a cheap reality for all people! I soooooo want to look out the window & see these beautiful objects in person.

Unfortunately, many would argue that NOT spending money on these things IS getting our priorities right. Very sad but true.

a reply to: wildespace

those are great pictures, thank you for reminding us about one of our best missions

originally posted by: 3danimator2014

originally posted by: enlightenedservant
a reply to: wildespace

I don't know why but that large picture of Rhea resonates with me. It's absolutely stunning. I guess it makes me think of how our Moon must have looked a long time ago.

Humankind needs to get its priorities together! We need to pool our global resources & make space travel a cheap reality for all people! I soooooo want to look out the window & see these beautiful objects in person.

Unfortunately, many would argue that NOT spending money on these things IS getting our priorities right. Very sad but true.

We could always do both. Stop warring here, feed our people here, then team up for massive projects like this.

When I see pictures of moons and planets; all I can relate is protons, electrons, neutrons and whatever other trons go on unseen.

As above, so below, such is the nature of the universe.

The microcosm, and the macrocosm..

Such a strange nature we exist inside of.. but fascinating indeed

Thanks for the pics, never gets old, and as we progress with space and photography tech, the pics just get better and better

a reply to: wildespace

Hyperion is highly unusual. I wonder why so many craters on such a small body.

originally posted by: MarioOnTheFly
a reply to: wildespace

Hyperion is highly unusual. I wonder why so many craters on such a small body.

I think it's due to its very low density. On the much denser moons, craters are kind of smoothed out by gravity and by the density of the material that gets disturbed. It's like trying to make craters in dough or clay. On Hyperion, on the other hand, each impact produced a neat depression that stayed preserved in its original state, as there's not enough gravity or "fluidity" of the material to smooth it over.

a reply to: MarioOnTheFly

I wonder why so many craters on such a small body.

It used to be a towed target. When the Air Force were done with it, they parked it in orbit round Titan.

a reply to: wildespace

Great stuff wildespace - thanks for posting those pics!!

I always had a feeling there was something special about Saturn for some reason...I'm not sure why.

Cassini's mission has been awesome. Wish all the the probe missions were as successful...

Images from the latest (and last) flyby of Hyperion from yesterday are coming in. I've assembled some of them into colour images:

True-colour (red, green, blue)


False-colour (infrared, green, UV)