Category Archives: saturn

astronomy, saturn, venus

What Would Venus Look Like from Saturn?

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Bright, Shiny, Small

NASA's Cassini spacecraft sees Venus, the white dot just to the right of the image center. The image was taken November 10, 2012.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft sees Venus, the white dot just to the right of the image center. The image was taken November 10, 2012. Courtesy NASA/CICLOPS/CASSINI. Click to see larger image.
Venus appears just off the edge of the planet, in the upper part of the image, directly above the white streak of Saturn's G ring. Lower down, Saturn's E ring makes an appearance, looking blue thanks to the scattering properties of the dust that comprises the ring. A bright spot near the E ring is a distant star.
Venus appears just off the edge of the planet, in the upper part of the image, directly above the white streak of Saturn’s G ring. Courtesy NASA/CICLOPS/CASSINI. Click to enlarge.

It’s always fun to get a look at worlds in our solar system from the perspective of other planets. The imaging system on the Cassini spacecraft, which is on a multi-year mission studying the Saturn system, caught a glimpse of Venus during one of the mission’s orbits around Saturn. What you’re seeing here is what Venus (and basically Earth if it were visible in this image) would look like if you were orbiting Saturn from your own space station.

Our inner solar system worlds would be just tiny dots in the distance.  In the foreground would be Saturn itself — or rather just the limb of the ringed planet as shown at left. The rings stretch out to the left.

The image on the right also shows Venus as it appeared from the Cassini spacecraft on January 4th, 2013. The rings are not illuminated as much as they were in the previous image, making it easier to spot the planet. That bluish streak at the lower right is the E ring.

You need to look at these pictures in full size (just click on them) to appreciate the beauty of seeing Earth’s neighbor world from faraway Saturn. To me, it really brings home the fact that our home world is really a tiny place in space — and it’s the only home world we have!

cassini, cassini mission, enceladus, rings, saturn

Saturn Dazzles Again!

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Even Shadowed, It’s Gorgeous

Check this image out, folks. Click on it to get the big view.  It’s a backlit, seriously moody view of the ringed planet made by the Cassini spacecraft and released this week by NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Space Science Institute. It’s a rare sight because it’s not often that the spacecraft’s orbit takes it to the precise point where the planet, rings, and Sun all line up perfectly to deliver a high-quality view of the rings, plus two dots in the lower left that are Enceladus (Saturn’s active moon) and Tethys (another of Saturn’s icy moons). The detail in this image is astonishing. You can see individual rings in the system, and if you peek closely, you can see them in the gaps as well.  The shadow of the rings on the planet’s cloud tops is especially amazing.

Saturn was one of the first planets I saw a picture of when I was growing up. We had a book about space in the house and when I laid eyes on that weird ringy place, I was hooked!  A bunch of years later, I found myself at JPL during the Voyager 2 encounter with Saturn, covering the event for a newspaper story.  It was even more amazing to me than that first glimpse I had as a child. Pictures like this continually reinforce for ME that the universe is an amazing place that we need to keep exploring!

Holiday Greetings

One of many cool holiday cards using Hubble images! Courtesy STScI.

For those of you still looking for great images to put on your holiday newsletters or greeting cards, this Saturn image is a pretty good candidate. There’s also the highly popular Hubble Holiday Greeting Card page. It’s chock full of 38 nicely designed cards using Hubble Space Telescope images you can simply download and use for your greetings.  I have a hard time deciding which ones to use, so for some years I’ve used every one of them.

I’ve seen people also make up their own cards using images from Spitzer Space Telescope, Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Mars Curiosity rover, and many others. There’s some gorgeous artwork out there, provided by the cosmos and your tax dollars! So, check it out and be creative!