Groundbreaking radio science at Saturn

[CalliArcale]

The current phase of the Cassini mission is devoted primarily to studying Saturn's rings (although it does study moons as well as the opportunity presents itself). This phase is called the Occultation Sequence because it allows scientists to observe the affect Saturn's rings have on the radio signal from Cassini. These sorts of studies have never been done before with Saturn's rings, partly because Cassini is the first to orbit Saturn rather than simply fly past it, but mostly because of the geometry of the situation; Saturn has recently passed a solstice, making the rings just about as large as they can be from Earth. In addition, this was the first time three frequencies were used simultaneously, which allows multiple particle sizes to be detected. Cassini will perform 20 occultations altogether during the mission.<br /><br />The Cassini team has now released the first images produced via the Radio Science Subsystem, and they're stunning. The B-ring is showing up beautifully, and waves in the rings are visible as well. I'm not going to post the actual images; they're too big and would suffer from being scaled down. But you can get at them from this Cassini press release:<br /><br />Cassini Radio Signals Decipher Saturn Ring Structure <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>

 

[silylene old]

those full-resolution images are pretty! <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><em><font color="#0000ff">- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -</font></em> </div><div class="Discussion_UserSignature" align="center"><font color="#0000ff"><em>I really, really, really miss the "first unread post" function.</em></font> </div> </div>

 

[CalliArcale]

I particularly like the one mosaic that shows RSS data on the bottom and ISS (visible light) data on the top. It's stunning.<br /><br />Just as a quick aside, for anyone who may think the Occultation Phase is a waste of time, results like this show exactly why it's so valuable -- and so important. I certainly wouldn't discard it. It's telling scientists things about Saturn's rings that can't be found any other way. <div class="Discussion_UserSignature"> <p> </p><p><font color="#666699"><em>"People assume that time is a strict progression of cause to effect, but actually from a non-linear, non-subjective viewpoint it's more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly . . . timey wimey . . . stuff."</em>  -- The Tenth Doctor, "Blink"</font></p> </div>