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Aug 14, 2008: Targeting the Jet Sources - The geologically active "tiger stripe" fractures of Enceladus are revealed in unprecedented detail in three high-resolution Cassini image mosaics, acquired during the Aug. 11 flyby. [Press release here.] |
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Aug 12, 2008: Skeet Shooting Enceladus - Cassini's first-of-a-kind sharp shooting over the south polar terrain of Enceladus to image the unusual geology there was a dazzling success, capturing, at close range, several of the 'tiger stripe' fractures that cross the south pole. |
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Aug 7, 2008: Enceladus Rev 80 Flyby - Skeet Shooting Enceladus: Cassini will plunge toward Enceladus on Aug. 11, coming within a mere 50 kilometers of its equatorial region and diving through the icy spray of its towering south polar plume. The detailed schedule of events for this remarkably close encounter, which is expected to return exquisitely detailed views of the surface vents of Enceladus' famous jets, is presented in a special edition of the regular CICLOPS feature, Looking Ahead. |
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Captain's Log
March 15, 2007
Will the wonders in this distant corner of our solar system ever cease? In recent months, our travels have taken us to realms around Saturn never before visited by spacefaring vehicles, showing us vistas never before seen by human eyes.
Those same trajectories over the high latitudes on Saturn and across its rings also carried us over the north polar region of Titan.  What we have found is an explorer's dream: vast areas, equivalent in size to terrestrial seas, very likely holding the liquid methane and ethane that, over time, has rained down from Titan's dark and hazy skies onto the icy landscape below.
A combination of the images gathered by our cameras as we flew over Titan's northern terrains, along with the synthetic imagery constructed from Cassini's radar signals, has sketched out for us, with both broad and delicate strokes, the nature and geography of this remote place. Skimming over the pole, we find a region carved and pitted with dark depressions of various sizes. In the lower resolution natural color and infrared images, their outlines look smooth. In the higher resolution radar imagery, they are jagged and irregular, like the coastline of Maine. Most of these appear to Cassini's radar as the uniformly darkest regions yet observed: a strong, though not incontrovertible, indication that liquid hydrocarbons fill these basins.
The majority of the basins are small to medium in size; two are enormous. And considering the small size of Titan compared to the Earth, the largest of these are in fact equivalent in relative surface area to the mid-size seas on our planet.
What's more, these new discoveries at Titan's northern extremes now lend support to our suggestion of nearly two years ago, that the lake-like features with similar geologic form dotting the moon's south polar terrain -- one equivalent in relative size to the Earth's Black Sea -- may also be liquid-filled.
 In all, it appears we have found surrounding both poles of Titan extensive wetlands, stippled with basins of wide-ranging sizes awash with wet hydrocarbons. It seems that the surface liquids on Titan -- at least in the current season -- have preferentially collected at the poles. Why this should be the case remains a mystery.
And so our exploits roaming the high reaches above and below Saturn and its companions have not only treated us to a whole new way of looking at the planet and its rings, but have shown us a remarkable and hitherto secreted place on Titan, seemingly more fantastic than real, of darkened scene, unimaginable cold, with methane clouds aloft and shorelines lapped by the aggregate alien rains of a myriad Titan years.
Will the wonders in this distant corner of our solar system ever cease? Not likely.
Carolyn Porco
Cassini Imaging Team Leader
CICLOPS
Boulder, CO
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| Captain's Log: Mission Accomplished! | | June 30, 2008 | In late 1990, a collection of hundreds of scientists and as many engineers across the US and Europe were assembled together and given the charge to undertake a far-sighted interplanetary expedition of enormous scope and reach.
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| Captain's Log: Diving Over Enceladus | | March 26, 2008 | Our run of daring tactical maneuvers over the surface of Enceladus to uncover as much as we can about this strange beast began two weeks ago, and today we learn what came of that encounter.
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| Captain's Log: Holiday Greetings 2007 | | December 24, 2007 | So another year around Saturn is coming to a close, and by anyone's measure it has been a momentous time of adventure and revelation.
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| Captain's Log: Cassini's Diamond Anniversary | | October 15, 2007 | Ten years ago today, like a great mythological bird rising in brilliant magnificence from its funeral pyre, a mighty Titan IV rocket, equipped to scale the gravity binding it and its precious cargo to Earth, leapt with a deafening roar from Cape Canaveral's Launch Pad 40 on a pillar of orange flames, veered gracefully towards the east, and quickly receded into the black of night.
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| Captain's Log: A Year of Surveillance | | December 29, 2006 | As another year in Saturn orbit, and sixteen additional revolutions around the planet, come to a close, we look back on the spoils of 2006, a Year of Surveillance, when we dove in close and enjoyed repeated looks at the bodies and phenomena we discovered during our first 1.5 years around the ringed planet.
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| Captain's Log: Total Eclipse of the Sun ... and a Pale Blue Orb | | September 19, 2006 | In its ceaseless wanderings around Saturn over the last two years, Cassini has delighted us Earthlings with ever-changing vistas of Saturn and its collection of rings and moons. Today, we are treated to a rare view of the Saturnian system like we've never seen it before.
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| Captain's Log: Sixty-Four Sights from Saturn | | June 18, 2006 | Today, former Beatle Paul McCartney turns 64, a landmark anniversary made so by his own special blend of diverse musical creativity and sunny disposition captured in the old-fashioned song `When I'm 64', recorded 40 years ago this year.
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| Captain's Log: Enceladus! | | March 9, 2006 | Enceladus! Last November, special imaging sequences trained on Enceladus as it sat backlit by the sun revealed in striking detail the plume of material that we had flown through back in July as we buzzed the Enceladus surface.
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