Cassini Rocks! Have a look at this : 
Oh boy, can you imagine being able to fly along and look out of your window at this? Sigh.
Those are Saturn’s rings, with Titan in the background (all gassy and fuzzy looking as a result) and the “moonlet” (read: alien spacecraft in stealth mode?) Epimetheus in the front field.
-cvj
(Via Dean W. Armstrong and Bad Astronomy More raw images here.)
Cosmic Variance is a group blog by people who, coincidentally or not, all happen to be physicists and astrophysicists:
Our day (and night) jobs notwithstanding, the blog is about whatever we find interesting — science, to be sure, but also arts, politics, culture, technology, academia, and miscellaneous trivia. We have similar outlooks on many things, widely disparate opinions about others, and will do our best to keep the discourse reasonably elevated.
May 3rd, 2006 at 4:04 pm
ditto sigh…
I know the “rational” response is that sending humans into space is not cost effective or good science but my gut level emotional response is …
Boy that would be really cool.
Oh well,
Elliot
May 3rd, 2006 at 4:51 pm
It would be cool to work in an office where the office manager and co-workers agree that images like this are cool, and decorate the office with backlit images just like this one.
But would the profit motive rob your office of backlit pictures like this as decoration? Would it rob you of pleasure in your workplace? Why bother paying for seat cushions, then? Just mount your employees directly on the seat support post!
May 3rd, 2006 at 4:58 pm
i just love photos like these
May 3rd, 2006 at 4:59 pm
and i agree with elliot. sure it may not be cost effective, but is it really wrong to throw a dash of human experiance into the world of science, especialy in a field of science where it would be just so damn amazing?
May 3rd, 2006 at 6:55 pm
can you imagine being able to fly along and look out of your window at this?
I can imagine flying along for months, looking out of the window and see nothing but this… I guess, I prefere the pacific coast. At least I can go to the beach (though I realize I mostly stare at it through my window).
Besides this, I like the photo :-), would indeed look nice at the wall next to the window.
May 3rd, 2006 at 7:21 pm
“I can imagine flying along for months, looking out of the window and see nothing but this”
yeah right, not if we have warp drive by then. pshhhh, duhhh!
May 3rd, 2006 at 8:41 pm
Is anyone else struck by the visual similaraties between terrestrial cloud formations and images of nebula 1000s of light years across. It amazes me that nature seems to “repeat” his/herself across such a large scale.
May 3rd, 2006 at 8:53 pm
A gorgeous image of tax dollars being well spent…and A Hat Tip to NASA!
May 3rd, 2006 at 10:45 pm
Lovely, just lovely. Thanks for sharing it!
May 3rd, 2006 at 11:45 pm
have you guys seen Astronomy pic of the day? it is so gosh darn sexy i cant take it sometimes
May 3rd, 2006 at 11:55 pm
[…] Note 2: If this one wasn't hot enough, check and discuss another one at Cosmic Variance. There smarter than me. […]
May 4th, 2006 at 12:18 am
Spatulated. You’re right…it is pretty amazing!!
Thanks,
-cvj
May 4th, 2006 at 12:22 am
Why doesn’t this image have colors? (or they pictured the image in the range of the frequency of non-visible light?) And I wonder that how they give colors to the image as well.
May 4th, 2006 at 1:26 am
For those of you who can’t wait for their turn in touring space should try out Celesita . This is an amazing program. And there is a big community (and a dedicated website) for better add-ons and textures.
Just check out their screenshot gallery…
http://www.shatters.net/celestia/gallery.html
Have fun!
May 4th, 2006 at 1:08 pm
Spatulated: You can see more images of the fragments (B, C, G) of comet Schwassmann-Wachmann 3 here. It’s so cool when comets fragment!
May 7th, 2006 at 12:21 pm
Hi Sohn-
The camera only takes black and white images, and each time they take one a different color filter is stuck in front of the camera. They can make color images out of the individual black and white images, but they also get accurate measurements of how bright things are in each color. In addition, special color filters can isolate colors that are absorbed by methane in the atmosphere of Saturn and Titan and show otherwise invisible details.
In this case though, the camera was using a clear filter and it doesn’t look like they took any colored filter images in this particular sequence. The scientists may be interested in high resolution imaging of the small moon, or of something too dim to see with the filters on, or they want to make a movie out of the images. It’s hard to say without asking them.
Common questions about the raw images can be answered here.