(UPDATE: credit due, via Mark. Who acounts for a disturbingly large number of my “neato lookit” posts of late.)
This is incredible – a digital compilation of images from the Cassini probe, no CGI or animation, assembled into incredible breathtaking flybys of the Saturn system. The best part os the third, final sequence where we flyby Titan, Mimas, pass thru the ring-plane, and swoop past Enceladus.
5.6k Saturn Cassini Photographic Animation from stephen v2 on Vimeo.
I’ve a photo of me from 1996 as a visitor to JPL (where my friend’s dad worked) in front of the Cassini heat shield. I really need to dig that up… Let’s also remember that the controversy about Cassini being nuclear powered was totally bogus, and use that as a data point for why nuclear power is not the ultimate bugaboo that people assume it to be after the still-unfolding tradegy and disaster in Japan.
I had to think as it went by Iapetus… “that’s no moon.”
Seriously, I am less than convinced that it is a natural formation. And NASA’s avoidance of good imagery and suspicious equipment failures feed my doubts.
If there are convenient malfunctions on the Russian mission planned to launch in November and arrive in 2012, then I’ll be really suspicious. Or it might go off without a hitch, transmit amazing images, and convince me that it’s just another rock in space. The Russians seem to be thinking like I am, though, going for Iapetus and Phobos in quick succession.
i thought the same thing. We are simply programmed 🙂 But from what i remember in some planetary science classes its basically because of a giant collision, which deformed it instead of shattering because the composition of the moon is more watery than rocky.