-----Original Message-----
From: cpcomments@... [mailto:cpcomments@...]
Sent: Monday, June 22, 2009 9:33 AM
To: undisclosed@...
Subject: More Spectacular Visions ... from Cassini at Saturn



June 22, 2009


Dear Friends and Colleagues,


Yet another harvest of wondrous images, mosaics, and movies from
Saturn's march to equinox is coming to you today straight from the
Cassini Imaging Team.

The release of these new scenic views, found at ...

http://ciclops.org

... coincides with the opening today, at the Royal Observatory in
Greenwich, England, of a week-long celebration of the Cassini mission
and all that it has discovered in the last half-decade. For more
information about the activities and exhibit at Greenwich, visit:

http://www.nmm.ac.uk/visit/events/cassini-talks

[And please find below an image advisory that went out a few moments ago.]


Enjoy,

Carolyn Porco
Cassini Imaging Team Leader
Director, CICLOPS
Space Science Institute
Boulder, CO

------------------------------------------------------------------------

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
CASSINI IMAGING CENTRAL LABORATORY FOR OPERATIONS (CICLOPS)
SPACE SCIENCE INSTITUTE, BOULDER, COLORADO
http://ciclops.org
media@...

Joe Mason (720) 974-5859
CICLOPS/Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

Nigel Rubenstein +011-44-208-312-6732
National Maritime Museum Press Office, Greenwich, England

Image Advisory: June 22, 2009

NEVER-BEFORE-SEEN IMAGES FROM SATURN KICK OFF CELEBRATIONS AT ROYAL
OBSERVATORY GREENWICH IN LONDON

In anticipation of the upcoming equinox at Saturn, the imaging science team
on NASA's Cassini spacecraft is releasing today a series of images and
movies capturing scenes possible only once every 15 years.

This bounty of sights, that includes time-lapse sequences in which Saturnian
moons eclipse each other and cast long shadows onto the planet's famous
rings, represents only some of the fruits expected for the extended "Equinox
Mission" for Cassini, the robotic explorer that has been orbiting Saturn
since July 1, 2004.

Saturn's spin axis is tilted relative to its motion around the sun, and its
year is equal to 29.5 Earth years. Equinox, the twice-yearly period when the
sun passes through the plane containing the planet's rings, will happen for
the first time in almost 15 Earth years on Aug. 11, 2009. The novel
illumination geometry created by the approaching equinox lowers the sun's
angle to the ring plane and causes some of Saturn's moons, as well as
out-of-plane structures in the rings, to cast long shadows across the rings,
creating vistas never before seen by any Saturn-bound spacecraft. In fact,
only recently, Cassini's high-resolution camera spotted for the first time,
on the edges of a gap in Saturn's outer ring, enormous mile-high vertical
waves whose presence was unknown until betrayed by the waves' shadows.

Speaking of the recent images of the rings acquired as Saturn marches
towards its mid-August equinox, Carolyn Porco, leader of the Cassini Imaging
Team, said:

"It has been a scientist's delight to watch this almost wafer-thin
collection of icy debris, that we have come to know so well, change in
character and spring into the third dimension. Five years into this mission
and we find there are still new tales to be told." Porco is also the
Director of the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations in
Boulder, Colorado.

The new images and movies can be found at http://ciclops.org,
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini.

The release of the new images coincides with the opening of a week-long
celebration of the Cassini mission and all that it has discovered in the
last 5 years. A unique exhibition of the mission's images revealing the
beauty of Saturn, its rings and moons, opens at the Royal Observatory,
Greenwich today. "Visions of Saturn" features striking pictures of
hurricane-force storms in Saturn's turbulent atmosphere, the delicate
tracery of the ring system and a weird and wonderful array of satellites,
including Enceladus -- the whitest place in the solar system -- and a
planet-sized moon where liquid methane rains from an orange sky.

And some members of the Cassini Project, in London this week for a meeting
at University College London, will be speaking to the public at the Royal
Observatory, Greenwich during the evenings. Check
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/visit/events/cassini-talks for details.

Designed by Christopher Wren, the Observatory is home of Greenwich Mean Time
and the Prime Meridian and one of the most important historic scientific
sites in the world. Since its founding in 1675, Greenwich has been at the
centre of the measurement of time and space. Visitors can stand in both
eastern and western hemispheres simultaneously by placing their feet either
side of the Prime Meridian line. Today the galleries describe the
achievements of early astronomers, explain the history of the search for
longitude at sea and tell the story of precision timekeeping.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate,
Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed,
developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team consists of scientists from
the U.S., England, France, and Germany. The imaging operations center and
team leader (Dr. C. Porco) are based at the Space Science Institute in
Boulder, Colo.

-end-