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'Tis the Season for Spokes
PIA 11144
Avg Rating: 9.13/10
Full Movie: 1016x1016
Flash 40.8 MB
Quicktime 38.6 MB
MP4 movie 23.3 MB
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Dark spokes dance around Saturn's B ring in this series of movies comprised of images taken with Cassini's wide-angle camera.
This animation is a concatenation of spoke movies acquired in the second half of 2008 on Aug. 21, Sept. 19, Sept. 26, Oct. 11, and Nov. 25.
As Saturn nears equinox in August 2009 and the sun angle on the ring plane decreases, spokes are now common sights in Cassini images, just as they were in Voyager images (see PIA02275). The planet's orbital period is 29.5 years, so Saturn has nearly made one complete trip around the sun since the flybys of the two Voyager spacecraft in 1980 and 1981, allowing Cassini to closely match Voyager's viewing geometry.
Each of these five movies shows the sunlit side of the rings at low solar phase, or spacecraft-rings-sun, angles. The spokes appear dark against Saturn's B ring at low phase angles because the particles within them scatter light more efficiently in the forward direction (away from Cassini) than the surrounding larger ring particles. In the opposite viewing geometry, at high phase angles, spokes appear bright relative to surrounding ring particles (see PIA07807).
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The imaging team consists of scientists from the US, England, France, and Germany. The imaging operations center and team lead (Dr. C. Porco) are based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org.
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Released: April 2, 2009 (PIA 11144)
Image/Caption Information |
Alliance Member Comments
Hello Carolyn.
John got here before i did, so i get to be an echo. Congratulations! Well Earned, Well Deserved, And ABOUT TIME!!!. Carl Sagan and Issac Asimov did so much to make science accessable, understandable, and fun. I can't think of anyone else in this day and age who is as deserving of awards named for those two as you are. Keep up the great work!
peace
NeKto
Hi Carolyn,
I would just like to say CONGRATULATIONS on the award of the Carl Sagan Medal. The award for yourself and for the teams work since CASSINI's arrival at Saturn has been relentless and brilliant. You truly deserve the award, WELL DONE>
John.
its called a shine. its an ff222, features no good fiction .
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