New images from the Cassini spacecraft offer a stunning glimpse at Titan and Dione
Even with the advent of commercial?space tourism, let's face it ? odds are that you won't have a chance to trek out to the final frontier yourself. Happily, spacecraft like?NASA's Cassini orbiter can transport us far beyond the reaches of the blue planet that we call home. The shot above, snapped by Cassini, shows Saturn's largest moon, Titan, in the foreground, with its third-largest moon, Dione, nestled into the shot just behind it. And the background? That's saturn itself, with the planet's iconic rings framing the truly stunning photo. Below you can enjoy another true-color view of the two moons. In the shot, Titan ? the far larger moon ? appears deceptively tiny due to Dione's proximity to the orbiter.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft?makes a habit of studying the ringed planet: its mission to size up Saturn officially kicked off in 2004, when it became the first spacecraft to enter Saturn's orbit. The orbiter packs two onboard cameras: one wide-angle for shooting large areas and a narrow-angle camera that handles the fine detail. The two cameras shoot mostly using visible light, but they are also equipped to snap infrared and ultraviolet images.
The Cassini orbiter is one half of the?Cassini-Huygens mission, a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency. Before the slated end of its epic interstellar quest in 2017, Cassini will continue to collect data on Saturn's geological history and the puzzling nature of the planet's rings, among other research aims. Hopefully that means the orbiter will be sending us plenty more unbelievable portraits of our solar system's second largest planet for a handful of years to come.
Titan and Dione
[Image credit:?NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute]
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This article originally appeared on Tecca
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