The Cassini robotic explorer continues to send back incredible imagery from its mission amongst Saturn and its moons. The latest series of images are part of the Equinox mission to observe the changing seasons on Saturn, and are rendered to expose the incredible detail of the stormy atmosphere underneath the signature rings of the planet. If you look at the lower left corner in the image above you will see an especially well defined storm, seen essentially as a blue dot in Saturn’s atmosphere.

This image was taken with the wide-angle camera on-board Cassini on Dec. 29, 2008 at a distance of approximately 680,000 miles from Saturn.

More on the Cassini Equinox mission. More on the Cassini imaging team. More on my own following of Cassini here on schneiderism.

The Phoenix Lander on Mars has not been heard from in nearly two weeks. It was originally designed to last for about 90 days, but it lasted for over 5 months delivering to us a treasure trove of images and information from its landing spot on the surface of Mars. The loss of contact with the robotic explorer is due primarily to weather conditions at its location, which have been steadily worsening. At the same time the sunlight available to recharge its batteries has been lessening each day as the sun gets lower in the Martian sky. Officially, it is the position of the Phoenix team that the mission is now complete, though mission control will continue to listen for any signs that Phoenix is still operational.  However, it does not appear there is much hope this is the case. While the Phoenix Lander’s mission of collecting data from Mars appears to be finished, the mission of reviewing, interpreting, and applying the enormous volume of information from Phoenix continues apace, and will continue well into the future given the volume of data collected. Phoenix was an impressive step forward in deepening our knowledge and understanding of Mars, and it was a mission successful beyond everyone’s expectation.

Mars Phoenix will be especially memorable for me, as not only have I written about Mars several times, but I also followed the Mars Phoenix mission very closely. I followed Mars Phoenix on Twitter, getting daily insights into what the robotic explorer was up to. I learned of the mission’s discovery of water ice on Mars via Twitter, and subscribed to the NASA image feeds to be among the first to see what incredible images Phoenix was capturing for us. The Mars Phoenix mission was an excellent exercise by NASA in involving all of us in the great work and exploration that is being done. Mars Phoenix helped us to feel as though we were part of the mission.

That I am absolutely fascinated by the exploration of Saturn and its moons being conducted by the robotic explorer Cassini is no mystery. There is the fire hose of discovery that Cassini is beaming back to us, discovery that is changing the way we think about our solar system and how it was formed. As if that alone is not enough to justify this mission of space exploration, there is the incredible imagery sent back to blow our minds like the image above of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, shown with the atmosphere of Saturn in the background, captured by Cassini back in 2005, and images like these:

The image above, taken by Cassini on March 12, 2008, provides us great detail of the pock-marked surface of Enceladus. Contrast this image of Enceladus to this one:

This image shows the deep canyon feature of Enceladus and is noticeably missing the impact craters of the previous image. The picture above was snapped by Cassini earlier this month on October 12th.

These images, and more, can be viewed in incredible resolution at The Big Picture.

More incredible imagery from Mars. This time it is a nice detail image of Ius Chasma, an area within Valles Marineris which is believed to be the largest canyon in the solar system. This recently released image by NASA was snapped by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, one of the many robotic explorers working for us on Mars right now, and shows in pretty stunning detail the stratigraphic layers believed to have been created by both wind and water. I am in awe of the detail of this image and with the frequency and quality of images available to us from Mars. Nice work NASA, the ESA, and all of your partners for all of the Mars missions. I’m a fan.

I had already posted about Cassini’s August 11th very close flyby of Saturn’s moon Enceladus, and some of the amazing images it captured, but this mosaic warrants posting as well. It is a composite of eight images from Cassini that have been stitched together. The image above is shown in enhanced color and Enceladus would not actually look like this to the human eye. Enhanced color, in this case achieved using a combination of five different lenses, is used to bring out more feature differentiation and detail for analysis, things like the four south polar sulci (which are surface depressions or fissures, and often referred to as Enceladus’ “tiger stripes”) visible in this mosaic. To the human eye Enceladus would look more like below, the starkly stunning image that led my previous post on Enceladus:

More on these images at The Planetary Society

Saturn’s moon Enceladus, pictured above in a full color image from a flyby in 2005 and written about on schneiderism before, received a close visit from the Cassini robotic explorer on August 11th. This flyby allowed Cassini to snap incredible surface detail images. The following are some of the more compelling pictures to come out of this flyby.

Below is an image of “The Mound,” which is the object in the center right of the image which is casting a long shadow to the right. The incredible detail of this photo shows us the complexity of ridges, fissures, and cracks that makes up the surface of Enceladus, looking almost like a close-up image of elephant skin.

One thing that Cassini potentially revealed is evidence of the active venting occurring on Enceladus, venting observed by Cassini on previous missions. The image below appears to show this venting in progress, and in detail. Looking at the center of the image, note the blurred whisps over the whitish fissure feature. Serious speculation suggests that we’re seeing active venting right there:

Cassini was able to get very close to Enceladus, much closer than previous visits, and the images below show the high detail that this made possible. The first was taken by Cassini at a distance of about 1600 miles, the second even closer taken from about 975 miles. Both are incredible.

From 1600 miles:

From 975 miles:

I do not think that we can overstate how incredible it is to be seeing the surface of Enceladus in such rich detail, truly an important and amazing accomplishment. These images are a treasure trove of information for researchers and scientists seeking to learn more about our solar system.

More on Cassini’s August 11th flyby of Enceladus at wanderingspace, and a very informative article on Enceladus can be found at The Planetary Society.

I came across this video at Coudal earlier this week and loved it. I dig this song, and expected a video like this from Cut Chemist. This is the first music video to be shot with a 360 degree panoramic lens. You’ve got to admit that it’s pretty amazing. To really experience this I suggest clicking through to Vimeo and watching the video in HD.

Oddly silly promotional video for DARPA’s 50th:

Found this video via Ares.

I subscribe to the NASA RSS feed for the Cassini-Huygens mission and just came upon this image taken back on June 10th of this year. This simple black and white image taken by Cassini conveys so much detail about the icy moon. There is the surface, riddled with impact craters and covered in ridges and striations. If you look at the upper right edge of the moon silhoetted against the blackness of space you get a sense of the dimensionality of the moon’s surface. Rhea is the second largest of Saturn’s moons at about 950 miles across, this image definitely gives it presence. Some more detail on Rhea:

• Rhea was discovered in 1642 by Giovanni Cassini, the namesake for the Cassini space probe and the astronomer who also discovered the Saturn moons Iapetus, Dione, and Tethys
• In direct sunlight the temp is as warm as -281°F, and in the shade -364°F
• Rhea has a rocky core that is about one-third of its mass, the rest is water-ice
• It is about 527,000 km from Saturn

Catching up on the deluge that is my RSS reader lately, I came across this image from APOD of the Caloris basin (also called Caloris Planitia) on Mercury recently snapped by the Mercury Messenger robotic explorer. It’s huge, and one of the largest impact basins from an asteroid-sized object in our solar system. The basin measures over 1,500 km across. The image above is a false color image in order to enhance details not visible in a true color image. The yellowish object dominating the image is obviously the impact crater of the Caloris basin, but the orange spots above denote volcanic activity on Mercury, which is new evidence provided by Messenger that the smooth plains of Mercury are actually lava flows.

I had previously written about Mercury and NASA’s Messenger mission here and here.