When Cassini Met Nine Inch Nails

Analysis by Ian O'Neill

What do you get when you mix space exploration with an industrial rock band? If you're thinking a bunch of Klingons trying their hand at slash metal, you're not the only one. However, if you asked designer/director Chris Abbas a very different blend of space music would result.
Using archival footage from the Cassini Solstice mission, which continues to dazzle us earthlings with incredible imagery from the Saturnian system, and a tune from the band Nine Inch Nails, a rather surprising -- and atmospheric -- experience awaits:

CASSINI MISSION from cabbas on Vimeo.

CASSINI MISSION from Chris Abbas on Vimeo.

Accompanying his video, Abbas has included an inspiring account of his motivation behind creating "Cassini Mission":

I truly enjoy outer space. It's absolutely amazing that we now have the ability to send instruments out into the void of the universe to observe all sorts of interesting things. Asteroids! Moons! Planets! Dark matter! This is the perfect opportunity for a Carl Sagan quote:
"Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known."
The footage in this little film was captured by the hardworking men and women at NASA with the Cassini Imaging Science System.

As with many of the "Space Music" articles we include on Discovery News, the excellent "Cassini Mission" epitomizes the crossovers between music and space exploration. Space is a human endeavor, so it's always a pleasure to bring the spirit of humanity into space.
Video credit: Chris Abbas. Including footage from NASA's Cassini mission and music by Nine Inch Nails. Video used with permission.

This Breathtaking Saturn Video Is Exactly What Everyone’s Soul Needs Right Now

Jesus Diaz — 
From: http://gizmodo.com/

5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation from stephen v2 on Vimeo.
Double click to enlarge


After all the horror we are seeing these days, after the continuous bad news, I think it's time for some mind- and spirit-cleansing beauty. Something to remind us that humans and nature can sometimes produce awe-inspiring things. Like this video.

The Cassini spacecraft reached Saturn in 2004, sending the clearest images of the most striking planet in the Solar System. Working at home, Stephen Van Vuuren used those photos to create the most hypnotizing space film I've seen. There is no CGI and no 3D models in these images. Just images from NASA. Jump to 0:56 for the final result of his work, so far.

Stephen took the approach and orbit photos, painstakingly cropping, scaling, and putting them together in an IMAX-quality film. Tens of thousands 5,600,000-pixel video frames in full 32-bit natural color. He is still working on it. When he's done, I want to see this big. [Thanks Karl!]

Unusual and awesome view of Saturn

by Phil Plait

Saturn, from Cassini. Click to embiggen

This takes some ’splainin’! But fasten your seat belt; this one is a bit of a wild ride.

First off, in this picture from Cassini we’re looking down on the rings from about a 41° angle. The sunlight is coming from the left, in a direction from below the rings as seen here. The part of the planet itself we see here is actually in shadow! That’s obvious from the top half of Saturn’s disk, which is dark. However, the bottom part of the disk is being softly illuminated by reflected light from the rings (rather like moonlight can illuminate the Earth). In that case, sunlight came from the left, hit the underside of the rings (underside as seen from this angle that is), reflected off, hit the planet, which then reflected that light back to Cassini’s camera.

The top half isn’t completely dark, though. Light from the Sun is passing through the rings, too. It gets scattered and diffused, and some of it hits the dark part of Saturn at the top of the picture. So we can see that as a faint illumination.

There’s more! The rings look like they’ve been sliced clean; that’s the planet itself blocking sunlight from the rings, so think of that as the shadow of Saturn on the rings. But if you look to the right of that cut, you can see still the rings! They look dark and thin, and you can only see them against the planet’s disk. Some of the light reflected off the planet’s southern hemisphere (which itself was reflected from the rings as mentioned above) backlights the rings where they are in shadow, so you can see them silhouetted against Saturn’s disk.

Wow. What a tortuous way to light an image! But it’s very cool that we have Cassini-on-the-spot to send us lovely images like this. We can simply enjoy their beauty, of course, or we can unravel the pieces of the puzzle (to mix a metaphor) to see what’s really going on here. Both are fun, and both are worth spending time doing.

On Saturn’s Moon Titan, It’s Raining Methane

Imagine a world where the average daytime temperature is -179°C, and torrential rains of liquid methane fall from the skies, forming vast but shallow pools that cover an area larger than the Great Lakes [ScienceNOW Daily News].

That’s the vision of the Saturnian moon Titan provided by the NASA spacecraft Cassini, which has been exploring Saturn and its satellites since 2004. In the latest findings, Cassini scientists have determined that Titan has seasonal weather patterns in which fierce storms fill up the methane lakes. “We see clouds that behave very much as clouds on Earth, and we see evidence of flooding on the surface, just as a lot of people in the [U.S.] Midwest saw last year” [National Geographic News], researcher Elizabeth Turtle said.

The researchers compared images taken in July 2004 and June 2005, and spotted both low-lying clouds and newly formed dark areas representing lakes of hydrocarbons. But the source of the methane that rains down through Titan’s thick atmosphere is still something of a mystery, as the methane should be quickly broken down by UV radiation. According to the researchers, the source most likely lies beneath the surface of the moon. There may be volcanoes releasing plumes of methane, instead of lava, from the interior. That methane, a leftover from the primordial gas cloud that formed Titan, could be plentiful enough to sustain the rainy weather [ScienceNOW Daily News].

The transitory lakes, described in Geophysical Research Letters [subscription required], formed in the south during summer in Titan’s southern hemisphere. But the seasons are slowly shifting, and researchers hope to keep watching the moon to see how rainfall and lake formation are affected. Says researcher Tony DelGenio: “The longer we stay, the more we get to see the seasons progress…. A few years down the line, in 2015, 2016, and 2017—if we last that long—we may be able to see the northern summer” [National Geographic News]. Cassini completed its originally scheduled four-year mission last year, but is now engaged in an extended mission through 2010. Since the craft is still in good working order and since it continues to send back fascinating observations of the Saturnian system, researchers hope NASA will continue to fund it past the 2010 cut-off date.

Image: Space Science Institute/NASA/JPL

Cassini Finds Mysterious New Aurora on Saturn

This image of the northern polar region of Saturn shows both the aurora and underlying atmosphere, seen at two different wavelengths of infrared light as captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Image: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Click here to enlarge image

(PhysOrg.com) -- Saturn has its own unique brand of aurora that lights up the polar cap, unlike any other planetary aurora known in our solar system. This odd aurora revealed itself to one of the infrared instruments on NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

"We've never seen an aurora like this elsewhere," said Tom Stallard, a scientist working with Cassini data at the University of Leicester, England. Stallard is lead author of a paper that appears in the Nov. 13 issue of the journal Nature. "It's not just a ring of auroras like those we've seen at Jupiter or Earth. This aurora covers an enormous area across the pole. Our current ideas on what forms Saturn's aurora predict that this region should be empty, so finding such a bright aurora here is a fantastic surprise."

Auroras are caused by charged particles streaming along the magnetic field lines of a planet into its atmosphere. Particles from the sun cause Earth's auroras. Many, but not all, of the auroras at Jupiter and Saturn are caused by particles trapped within the magnetic environments of those planets.

Jupiter's main auroral ring, caused by interactions internal to Jupiter's magnetic environment, is constant in size. Saturn's main aurora, which is caused by the solar wind, changes size dramatically as the wind varies. The newly observed aurora at Saturn, however, doesn't fit into either category.

"Saturn's unique auroral features are telling us there is something special and unforeseen about this planet's magnetosphere and the way it interacts with the solar wind and the planet's atmosphere," said Nick Achilleos, Cassini scientist on the Cassini magnetometer team at the University College London. "Trying to explain its origin will no doubt lead us to physics which uniquely operates in the environment of Saturn."

The new infrared aurora appears in a region hidden from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, which has provided views of Saturn's ultraviolet aurora. Cassini observed it when the spacecraft flew near Saturn's polar region. In infrared light, the aurora sometimes fills the region from around 82 degrees north all the way over the pole. This new aurora is also constantly changing, even disappearing within a 45 minute-period.

Provided by NASA

Spacecraft Passes Just 16 Miles From Surface Of Saturns Moon

By Chris Laker

These are the stunning images captured by the Cassini spacecraft as it headed towards Saturn's moon Enceladus before it made a daring dive just miles from the surface.

Travelling at 40,000MPH and just 82,000ft over the moon, the 'white-knuckle' flyby was the closest yet past any of Saturn's moons.

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This image was captured on Cassini's approach to the icy moon, 26,000 miles above the surface

Scientists are intrigued by the possibility that liquid water, perhaps even an ocean, exists beneath the surface of Enceladus.

To test their theory they sampled the composition of its water vapour geysers, which blast material 300 miles into space.

The team from Nasa will report detailed results from the flyby in November and early December.

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This image of Enceladus was taken 16,000 miles above the surface. The spacecraft passed just 16 miles from the moon at its closest point

Prior to the mission, Tamas Gambosi, a scientist at the University of Michigan said: 'One of the overarching scientific puzzles we are trying to understand is what happens to the gas and dust released from Enceladus.

'We know that Enceladus produces a few hundred kilograms per second of gas and dust and that this material is mainly water vapor and water ice.'

British planetary scientist Geraint Jones added it would be 'a white-knuckle pass.'

Four more Enceladus flybys are planned in the next two years, bringing the total number to seven during Cassini's extended Equinox mission.

The Enceladus geysers were discovered by Cassini in 2005. Since then, scientists have been intrigued about what powers them, because the moon is so tiny, roughly the width of Arizona at only 500 kilometers (310 miles) in diameter.

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The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft from NASA. Click enlarge for more detail

Cassini has been orbiting Saturn since 2004. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

Saturn is the sixth planet in our solar system, known for its golden glow and spectacular planetary rings.

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This picture, taken in 2006, shows the southern hemisphere of Enceladus. Many of the ancient craters remain pristine.

The most scientific interest in Saturn involves not the planet, but its moons, in particular the two largest , Titan and Enceladus.

A Cassini space probe sent to Titan's surface in 2004 revealed a world that looked a lot like home - a complex terrain of rivers, deserts scattered with dunes and lakes of liquid methane - the first open-body lakes to have been found anywhere other than Earth.

Scientists plan a further flyby of Enceladus at the end of the month, this time passing 122 miles from the surface.