September 11, 2017
Even the most precise clock in the world cannot measure how unlikely your existence really is.
Cassini Approaches Saturn
Birthday · September 11, 2017
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APOD published September 11, 2017 · Video still. Credit: Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA, NASA, S. Van Vuuren et al.; Music: Adagio for Strings (NY Philharmonic). A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
What would it look like to approach Saturn in a spaceship? One doesn't have to just imagine -- the Cassini spacecraft did just this in 2004, recording thousands of images along the way, and hundreds of thousands more since entering orbit. Some of Cassini's early images have been digitally tweaked, cropped, and compiled into the featured inspiring video which is part of a larger developing IMAX movie project named In Saturn's Rings. In the concluding sequence, Saturn looms increasingly large on approach as cloudy Titan swoops below. With Saturn whirling around in the background, Cassini is next depicted flying over Mimas, with large Herschel Crater clearly visible. Saturn's majestic rings then take over the show as Cassini crosses Saturn's thin ring plane. Dark shadows of the ring appear on Saturn itself. Finally, the enigmatic ice-geyser moon Enceladus appears in the distance and then is approached just as the video clip ends. The Cassini spacecraft itself, low on fuel, is scheduled to end on Friday when it will be directed to approach so close to Saturn that it falls in and melts.
Image credit: Cassini Imaging Team, ISS, JPL, ESA, NASA, S. Van Vuuren et al.; Music: Adagio for Strings (NY Philharmonic)