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May 2, 2012: Enceladus and Dione Rev 165 Raw Preview - NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured these raw, unprocessed images of Saturn's moons Enceladus and Dione during close flybys on May 2, 2012. |
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Apr 26, 2012: Phoebe: A Captured Planetesimal - Analysis of Cassini data, published this month in the journal Icarus, takes a new look at Saturn's irregular moon, Phoebe, and finds it to be an interloper in the Saturn system. (News release can be found here.) |
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Captain's Log
Star Date: October 26, 2004
Here we are. Wondering and waiting.
Nearly half a century of exploring the bodies in orbit around our Sun has brought us to this point ... staring down Saturn's largest moon, the last, great mystery our solar system has to offer.
 To us planetary explorers, Titan is a world apart. No other place we could visit, no other body we might study could present us with the possibilities promised by this cold, organic-rich and smoggy place.
In images taken on approach only a day ago, we have seen Titan's surface with greater clarity than we had in early July because of the more favorable viewing conditions of this encounter. While regions here and there may be reminiscent of other planetary bodies -- a boundary here that resembles a terrestrial shoreline, a marking there that reminds us of Neptune's satellite Triton -- in the end, this moon looks like no other place we've ever seen.
We are closer to Titan now than we've ever been before. The images we are expecting to receive should show details 10 times smaller, or better, than the best we have now.
This is history in the making. We will never be this innocent, or this ignorant, again. In a matter of hours, the solar system will become a very much smaller place.
Carolyn Porco
Cassini Imaging Team Leader
CICLOPS/Space Science Institute
Boulder, CO
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