Tuesday, October 2, 2012

SCIENCE - Saturn's rings shine in new NASA photo - WORLD


 
Stunning ... NASA's Cassini spacecraft's photo of Saturn. Photo: NASA

 


A stunning new image taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows off the southern side of Saturn and the planet's iconic ring system.

The near-infrared photo was taken from 14 degrees under the ringplane, researchers said, and looks toward the unlit side of the planet's rings. Cassini was about 2.9 million kilometres from Saturn, the second-largest planet in the solar system, at the time.

The 504 km-wide Enceladus, one of more than 60 moons that orbit the planet, can also be seen in the image. Despite being covered in ice, many researchers say Enceladus has one of the best chances in the solar system of hosting life beyond Earth, due to a large ocean of water that is thought to sit below the ice. It also generates a large amount of internal heat, thought to power geysers that erupt at the southern polar regions. The geysers were discovered by Cassini in 2005.

The $US3.2 billion Cassini mission launched in 1997 and has been studying Saturn since it arrived at there in 2004. The craft will study the ringed planet until at least 2017, and possibly beyond that.

In 2005, the Huygens lander touched down on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, and relayed the first photos ever from its surface.

Titan is often described as being more like a planet than a moon. It is the only other body in the solar system with a dense, nitrogen-dominated atmosphere aside from Earth. For this reason, some scientists believe that it, too, may be able to support life.

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