Posted on 02/09/2005 11:30:14 AM PST by dead
THE first true colour image of Saturn reveals that the ringed planet is not the silver orb visible from Earth but a deep shade of blue.
Instead, the image - released yesterday by the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado - shows that Saturn's northern hemisphere is a soft azure, striped by the shadows of the planet's rings.
In this image released by NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute on Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2005, a true color view from the Cassini spacecraft taken Jan. 18, 2005, shows the moon Mimas as it drifts along in its orbit against the azure backdrop of Saturn's northern latitudes. The long, dark lines on the atmosphere are shadows cast by the planet's rings. Saturn's northern hemisphere is presently relatively cloud-free, and rays of sunlight take a long path through the atmosphere. This results in sunlight being scattered at shorter (bluer) wavelengths, thus giving the northernmost latitudes their bluish appearance at visible wavelengths. (AP Photo/NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
The blue hue is a moody backdrop for Saturn's icy moon Mimas.
"It's pretty cool, and it also happens to be a neat picture," commented Chris Tinney, a Sydney-based astronomer with the Anglo-Australian Observatory.
According to Dr Tinney, a precise understanding of the blue view will come once the Cassini mission's imaging scientists analyse the picture in detail.
So far, the team -- located at the Boulder Institute's Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations -- suspects the colour is linked to the apparently cloud-free nature of the upper atmosphere of the northern latitudes.
The new blue view was snapped by the Cassini spacecraft's narrow-angle camera on January 18, at a distance of roughly 1.4million kilometres from Saturn.
The images were taken using a combination of infrared, green and ultraviolet filters.
The imaging experts then adjusted the colours to match what the scene would look like in natural colour.
The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed and built at the jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a co-operative project of the US space agency NASA and the European and Italian space agencies.
Huh? I thought it was always depicted as light orangish like Jupiter?
Besides being a cool photo, it demonstrates how enormous saturn is, since it was taken nearly 900,000 miles away.
Cool.
Pretty.
Seriously, this is supposedly true color, so the old images were obviously inaccurate. Probably color-enhanced incorrectly.
Holy cow! Look at the size of the ring in comparison to the size of the rings. A really beautiful picture.
Bahhh! Blue. Kerry country. [Pttuey!]
If this were a private enterprise, we'd have been to the Jupiter and Saturn already, and the asteroid belt would be gone after we have mined them all out. ;)
Stunning. BTT.
cool.
BTTT
Blue, huh? Maybe a lot of those who are blue and unhappy with the President's re-election would like to move here.
Just... wow.
Well that's what bugged me about the darn Mars rover pictures! They kept "enhancing" them to get the "true color". Wish they'd just duct tape a darn CCD USB webcam to a strut and send that back raw!
HuH? I was expecting to see a new Ion with a V8 and all wheel drive!
You'd have to leave me out of the "we". I don't like to fly on Earth the thought of flying into space makes me dizzy! LOL!!
Although, I think a private group to investigate space would be really interesting and you are probably right, we would see results much, much faster.
Oh! Maybe we could use it to our conservative advantage. Start strip mining on planets. Libs HATE strip mining. They go to said planet to protest and they are out of our hair for a good looooong while! ;-)
Saturn appears as cream colored in my little refractor.
"She wore Blue Velvet"
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