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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
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  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. The bird was gone, never to return. And it carried a spacecraft destined for a seven-year journey around the inner solar system, through the asteroid belt, across the Jupiter-Saturn divide, into orbit around the ringed planet, and permanently into history.
We Cassini explorers are marking today our Diamond Anniversary ... ten remarkable years of odyssey and discovery, ten years that have tried,  challenged and defined us, but above all, ten years that have culminated in our astonishing exploratory adventures in the promised land that is the realm of Saturn.
In celebration, the Cassini Imaging Team is releasing today a large collection of spectacular images, maps, and movies taken by our faithful cameras of some of the most photogenic sights to be found in this sector of the solar system.
Here you will find the shadow-scored, pastel-hued globe of Saturn as it approaches northern spring, colorful Titan peering from behind the rings, telling details on the surfaces of some of Saturn's moons, a map of the surface of Titan updated with newly explored terrain, a never-before-seen  sweeping survey of the unilluminated side of Saturn's main rings in natural color, and the view of majestic Saturn, attended by its major inner icy moons, seen from the orbit of Iapetus. You will also catch Prometheus in motion as it gores the F ring, and best of all ... a thrilling documentary of our recent historic flight over the mountain ranges of Iapetus. It is hard to imagine an environment more rich in splendor, more offering of scientific insight, than what we have unveiled at Saturn. We are fortunate to be surrounded by such sublime beauty.
We also mark this special occasion by several new additions to this website. You will now find under "Imaging Diary" a section where images returned by the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune and their rings  and moons, as well as the "Pale Blue Dot" images of planet Earth, can be found. Comparing the bounty returned by our Cassini cameras at Saturn with that returned by Voyager has never been easier.
And for the golfers among you, we have updated our popular Golf Sector 6 game with a special set of Outer Links. It's tee time at Saturn once again.
To the thousands upon thousands of fellow explorers who have traveled along with us since we departed Earth ten years ago today, who have followed our adventures across the solar system and into orbit around Saturn, and who have since been as awestruck as we have at our findings there, we say "Happy Anniversary! It's been a pleasure flying with you."
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: The Wetlands of Titan | | 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.
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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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