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Cassini's Galactic Aspirations
PIA 07773
Avg Rating: 8.76/10
Full Size 1020x1020:
JPEG 500 KB
PNG 798 KB
TIFF 1.0 MB
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Cassini briefly turned its gaze from Saturn and its rings and moons to marvel at the Carina Nebula, a brilliant region 8,000 light years from our Solar System and more than 200 light years across. Nearly every point of light in this image is a star in our galaxy, the Milky Way.
The nebula is a region of gas and dust made to glow by the ultraviolet light bursting from bright, hot and extremely massive young stars within. Darker regions in the scene are not devoid of stars; rather, they are areas where dense clouds of dust block the light from background stars.
This image, and others like it, are taken by the spacecraft from time to time for calibration purposes. Calibration images rarely contain such incredible sights as this, but this one affirms Cassini's position as the farthest, working astronomical observatory ever established around our Sun...our eyes on the cosmos, a billion miles from Earth.
The image was taken using the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on May 14, 2005. The view is a 68-second, clear filter exposure.
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: December 22, 2005 (PIA 07773)
Image/Caption Information |
Alliance Member Comments
One of the larguest star-forming complexes of our galaxy posing for Cassini. Who could have the DARK skies she has...and be able to see every point of the celestial sphere without virtually obstacles of any kind.
flash back to '2001: A Space Odyssey'...and don't say you're too young to have seen it..a quote, "My God, it's full of stars!"
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