On October 30, 2006, the marvelous Cassini spacecraft took this oblique view of Saturn:
Sigh. So pretty.
It made me think: I’m so used to seeing pictures of planets being "face on" — that is, like you’re looking straight at them — that when I see one taken at an angle like this, it really makes it look like a planet, like a place. It’s not just a light in the sky, or some imagined fantasy land. It’s a world, a physical location, with size, and perspective, and depth. Someday we might go there, live there, play there.
Until then, we can be satisfied that our mechanical proxies do it for us, and do it very well.
December 12th, 2006 at 4:57 pm
Very very very pretty, it’s nice to see the depth. It’s a change from the usual flat cloud textures.
But I wouldn’t want to go play there.
December 12th, 2006 at 5:04 pm
Cool. I think this must be the first image I’ve seen showing the cloud-tops of one of the gas giants with relief texture. They’re actually casting shadows.
December 12th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
Cassini should be nominated for something. It’s photos are amazing.
December 12th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
Remember that we have to finish building our lunar station on The Moon’s south pole in Year 2024 before we can even think about playing on Saturn.
Yet, a distant dream keeps some of us awake to the future. Those cloud tops make Saturn look down-to-earth. Bring on the rainbows & rings.
December 12th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
I agree. It does make it seem like a real place. That’s an awesome picture.
December 12th, 2006 at 5:34 pm
Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. The upcoming tenth anniversary of Carl Sagan’s passing reminds me how proud he’d be over the new level of quality of the recent planetary pictures featured on this blog.
His spirit lives on in every planetary robotic mission.
Thanks BA, as always, for the wonderful sights!
December 12th, 2006 at 6:03 pm
Looks nice. Do they have spectral info to see if the various layers have compositional differences?
December 12th, 2006 at 6:07 pm
I like the different photo perspective, however I second Michelle Rochon’s sentiments above, with a twist: My understanding is that Saturn isn’t exactly a place we *could* “play”. Admittedly, my planet knowledge has ebbed considerably over the years, but I recall some tidbit about Saturn and more notably Jupiter being “mostly gases” with a relatively solid core somewhere underneath the layers upon layers of gases. Something something pressure way worse than X miles underwater something.
December 12th, 2006 at 7:02 pm
Clouds are drifting about on saturn. When I see pics like this one, I drift off in speculations about all the stuff that might be happening out there that no one will never ever know about.
Lonely little rocks whirling around. For millions of years. EM waves pushing their way out towards the absolute boundaries of existance. Stars burning and galxies forming. Right now. Makes me feel humble.
December 12th, 2006 at 7:22 pm
Continuing what Zoot says above, Is not that a likely place for life to originated? Problem is, how do we get there to see it?
December 12th, 2006 at 9:07 pm
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/image-details.cfm?imageID=1309
That’s the image that did it for me; made me realize that there are actual places to go out there, that I could go watch methane waves crash on a distant shore, if I were only provided some vessel to get there (and a really warm jacket).
December 12th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
BEAUTIFUL!!
I would go play and live there, but I’d rather not die in the process…
December 12th, 2006 at 10:38 pm
I think the only sound from anyone sent playing there would be a decreasing AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! as they fell.
December 13th, 2006 at 12:22 am
The good news:
Someday we (humans) will spread out through out the Solar System.
The bad news:
It isn’t going to happen (or probably even begin) in my lifetime (I’m 57).
The sad thing is that our descendants will wonder what took us so long!
December 13th, 2006 at 7:16 am
Nice!! Too bad, however, that it wasn’t in color since the lower region of yellows, reds, and whites would probably blend into the rich blues of the clearer skies to the north.
December 13th, 2006 at 10:20 am
Hang-gliding above the cloudtops of Saturn would be an awesome experience… the view could be quite incredible. As far as I’ve been able to figure, the gravity is fairly Earthlike too, so its only the cold, the chemistry and the turbulence which are the major obstacles (and getting there of course)…
December 13th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
I never seem to consider most of the space images as reality. Strange, I know they are real but I just don’t think of it that way. I have to really try to think about it as “real”. Then it is even more amazing!
George brings up a good point. Why aren’t these images in color? I mean it is 2006 after all. I know the teams that design these spacecraft have a good reason, I don’t know what it is, but c’mon, lets get some color here boys.
December 13th, 2006 at 3:26 pm
andy Says:
“As far as I’ve been able to figure, the gravity is fairly Earthlike…”
By golly, you’re right. Even though Saturn is more massive than Earth by a factor of over 95/1, acceleration due to gravity at the cloud tops comes to about 10.43m/s2, only slightly more than Earth at sea-level.
December 14th, 2006 at 10:04 am
…and if you factor in centrifugal force, things become even more comfortable. At least on the equator.
December 14th, 2006 at 8:18 pm
In fact, here are the cloud-top strengths of gravity for our four gas giants:
acceleration, in m/s^2 ratio to Earth’s, sea-level
Jupiter 24.80 2.53/1
Saturn 10.43 1.06/1
Uranus 8.87 0.90/1
Neptune 11.15 1.14/1
So it turns out the citizens of Lando Calrissian’s Cloud City may have been tolerably comfy.
December 14th, 2006 at 8:19 pm
Dang it. The formatting for my planetary table didn’t survive.