saturn fly-by

Wow. This is incredible. It is a film made up of thousands of still photographs taken by the Cassini spacecraft as it traveled to Saturn, flying through its rings and past one of its moons.


5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation from stephen v2 on Vimeo.


Imagine how much more we could see, how much closer we could get to Saturn and other planets and perhaps even star systems if we had put even a tenth of our defense budget since the end of the Cold War into exploring space. Seems like someone might have thought of that before we decided that choking the life out of this planet was going to be our chosen course.

Ah well. Surely Jeebus is on the way. I'm sure he's going to fix everything.
via.

cassini pics from saturn

Wow. Just...wow. That is an amazing shot of Saturn's moon Enceladus, taken from the Cassini-Huygens probe.

These are amazing. Pictures taken from the Cassini–Huygens spacecraft currently orbiting Saturn. Many more pics and info on what they are and what they mean at the second link above.

Here's a few more.


The moon Rhea seemingly hanging by a thread from Saturn's rings.


Mimas above Saturn's rings


Epimetheus before Titan.


And finally Saturn itself. Remember, these are photographs, mostly just raw (although the above had some light filtration to bring out Saturn's rings more) as seen from the spacecraft. Would it be worth twenty or thirty years of your life to see that yourself? (Not that Cassini is actually coming back or is manned. Just saying.)

Makes you feel kinda small, yeah? :)

(oh, via metafilter.)