I have to go to a birthday party (srsly) so I can’t put my usual spin on this, but yesterday Cassini swept over the south pole of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus, snapping away at the active regions of geysering there. The result?
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It almost doesn’t look real, does it? Click to get to more images, including embiggened ones. This mosaic has a max resolution of 12.3 meters per pixel! Those little round boulders you can see in the (hi-res) image? Yeah, they’re not much bigger than a typical house. Just to remind you, Saturn is about 1.5 billion kilometers (920 million miles) away right now.
Egads. The things we can do.
November 1st, 2008 at 6:25 pm
[...] BA Blog: Cassini hi-reses Enceladus Quote: [...]
November 1st, 2008 at 6:29 pm
FANTASTIC!
November 1st, 2008 at 7:10 pm
Damn! That’s some resolution. Cue the moon hoaxers talking about not taking snaps of the lander.
Question: Where does the name “Baghdad Sulcus” come from? As far as I know there is only one Baghdad.
November 1st, 2008 at 7:13 pm
“Baghdad Sulcus” explained here:
http://ciclops.org/view/5204/Baghdad_and_Cairo_Sulci_on_Enceladus
What I’d like to know is when we’re going to drill through the hard candy shell to the creamy center? Ditto for Europa.
November 1st, 2008 at 7:18 pm
This is SO AWESOME!!! Planetary astronomers must be partying hard over these!
November 1st, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Wow! I feel so blessed to live in this time where this type of exploration is possible. In the past it was unthinkable, or just good science fiction, in the future they will take it for granted.
Is it weird that my eyes are actually tearing up over this?
November 1st, 2008 at 7:25 pm
@The Chemist:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Features_on_Enceladus
I didn’t know this, but apparently all the features on Enceladus are named after locations in “The Arabian Nights.”
The sulci are:
Samarkand Sulcus
Harran Sulcus
Alexandria Sulcus
Cairo Sulcus
Damascus Sulcus
Baghdad Sulcus
The last four of those are called the Tiger Stripes.
November 1st, 2008 at 7:27 pm
Uh, what’s that about baghdad? And what’s a sulcus?
November 1st, 2008 at 8:40 pm
From the CICLOPs web page (http://ciclops.org/view/5204/Baghdad_and_Cairo_Sulci_on_Enceladus):
“Features on Enceladus are named for characters and places from “The Arabian Nights” and the four most prominent sulci are named Alexandria, Cairo, Bahgdad, and Damascus.”
A sulcus (in planetary geology) is subparallel groove or a trench that is formed by some geological process. Sulcus is a Latin word.
November 1st, 2008 at 9:20 pm
Looks like the closeup of an elephant’s belly…
November 1st, 2008 at 9:30 pm
Any idea on how those gullies/ridges have been/are being made?
November 1st, 2008 at 9:38 pm
When I was a kid we had a dog with mange. His skin looked like that all over his back.
- Jack
November 1st, 2008 at 10:10 pm
You know, it looks for all the world like the texture of elephant skin!
Yeah, and it’s 1 hour 20 minutes away at light speed!
OMFSM! Cassini’s frakkin’ awesome!
Rich
November 1st, 2008 at 10:23 pm
@ The Chemist & Michelle after checking the Wikipedia article “List of geological features on Enceladus” we learn that
and
Baghdad being one of them.
November 1st, 2008 at 10:24 pm
@Jack Hagerty,
Ewwww.
November 1st, 2008 at 10:29 pm
@The Chemist — actually I don’t see an issue with moon hoaxers asking questions like that. We can see the Mars rovers from orbit, but not lunar landers? I think it’s a legitimate question to ask, and I’m NOT a moon hoaxer.
Not all questions they have deserve to be automatically dismissed.
November 1st, 2008 at 11:25 pm
Michelle: “And what’s a sulcus?”
American Heritage Dictionary:
sulcus n., pl. — sulci
1. A deep, narrow furrow or groove, as in an organ or tissue.
2. Any of the narrow fissures separating adjacent convolutions of the brain.
Urban Dictionary:
sulcus (inter-mammary)
1. The area between a woman’s breasts; cleavage.
November 1st, 2008 at 11:48 pm
@ Craig & Chemist:
Hasn’t this already been covered in one of Dr. BA’s posts? We’ve never had cameras with this sort of resolution anywhere near the moon, have we?
November 2nd, 2008 at 12:51 am
It does look like an elephant’s skin. But I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near an elephant while it’s outgassing.
November 2nd, 2008 at 1:22 am
@Craig & by extension kuhnigget,
I actually know why we can’t see the moon lander, because as Kuhnigget has helpfully pointed out- it was addressed right here.
I’m dismissing the argument because of the facts as laid out on this same blog before, and commenting on how it may rear it’s ugly head again, that’s all.
Thanks goes out to everyone out there who explained the name but whose comment had yet to be approved.
November 2nd, 2008 at 3:52 am
Seen the latest Cectic yet? You’re featured
.
http://cectic.com/181.html
November 2nd, 2008 at 4:18 am
It’s a conspiracy I tell you! The powers that be are hiding the truth from all of us! The truth being that Enceladus is actually one giant elephant!
Anyways, nice picture. I imagine that the area in the middle to the right must have been taken at a weird angle or something and then re-adjusted, causing the lower-looking resolution.
November 2nd, 2008 at 6:23 am
@kuhnigget Even when NASA does put high res cameras in lunar orbit and if they do take pictures of the landing site, moon hoaxers would just claim the images were fake!
If they’re suggesting NASA performed the biggest cover up in history involving thousands of people and fooling the entire world, I’m sure it wouldn’t be a stretch for them to say they did a it of photoshopping on their lunar pics
November 2nd, 2008 at 6:54 am
I’ve been to Baghdad in Tasmania and there’s a Baghdad in Arizona as well.
November 2nd, 2008 at 8:55 am
Hey, I think I see a face in there! That must mean something, right?
heh.
November 2nd, 2008 at 8:56 am
And Thomas, the town in Arizona is spelled Bagdad.
November 2nd, 2008 at 9:07 am
And a Baghdad in Floriduh.
LOL @ Enceladus being a giant space elephant! Reminds me of some sci-fi book I read ages ago where the earth is invaded by aliens that have a rather elephantine appearance. Never new CASSINI got those closeups of them.
November 2nd, 2008 at 9:36 am
So, my last comments were deleted. Just wanted to let you know I wasn’t intending to be offensive or disruptive in any way, just making a lame joke.
November 2nd, 2008 at 10:41 am
Wait a minute. If Enceladus is a giant elephant, then there should be 3 more! And we should be able to see the Great A’Tuin!
November 2nd, 2008 at 11:06 am
Reminds me of some sci-fi book I read ages ago where the earth is invaded by aliens that have a rather elephantine appearance
That would be Footfall by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle.
November 2nd, 2008 at 2:30 pm
Looks kinda like a walnut, especially with the Sulcus forming a groove across the picture.
November 2nd, 2008 at 3:51 pm
Mercury has some surprises too.
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/10/30/mercury-messenger.html
November 2nd, 2008 at 7:22 pm
I recall similar images from Galileo at Europa.
Still cool!
November 2nd, 2008 at 8:13 pm
Well its good to see Baghdad (& for that matter, a Muslim, specifically Arabian, culture) getting a positive mention for once!
Now if only the USA had sent its troops and aircraft to invade and conquer the Baghdad on Enceladus instead of the Baghdad on Earth!
If only we’d sent the Neocon’s there too …
Incidentally folks, if I recall right there’s also an Arabia and a Syria on Mars.
November 3rd, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Has there been any more news on the organic molecules they found previously as part of the water being ejected from Enceladus? Have they found anything really interesting like glycine or adenosine triphosphate? Does anyone know what is the highest molecular weight of the organic compounds that Cassini has found so far?
November 4th, 2008 at 12:40 pm
What’s with all these astronomy posts? Isn’t this blog supposed to be about “Bad”? I come here looking for information on politics and stupid people but you keep posting all this astronomy-related stuff. I used to like your blog when you talked about Bad. I am leaving and never coming back.