15 All-Time Best Photos From Cassini 🛑 (large photos)

[procon]

Here Are 15 All-Time Best Photos From Cassini That You Absolutely Must See

Wow. Just, wow.

Cassini has been out there hard at work for a long time. The Saturn probe departed Earth in 1997 and spent seven years speeding across the solar system to arrive in orbit around the ringed planet in 2004.

For over 13 years, it's been up there collecting data with an array of spectrometers, magnetometers, radars, and yes, cameras.

While all these types of data are valuable to scientists, it's the images Cassini has been sending back down to Earth that have given the world a much more intimate acquaintance with the beloved ringed planet.

And they're not just about showing us its pretty face, either. With the breathtaking photos Cassini has been taking so far from home, we've been learning new and fascinating things about Saturn, its moons and its rings.

Over the years, here are some of our favourite images of a world so alien to our Earthling experience.

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-cassini-files-our-favourite-photos-from-the-departing-saturn-probe?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1

Full story and lots more photos at the link:

https://www.sciencealert.com/the-cassini-files-our-favourite-photos-from-the-departing-saturn-probe?perpetual=yes&limitstart=1

[TeapotInATempest]

1. Beautiful, thank you.

[Pacifist Patriot]

2. Wow, thanks for posting!

[niyad]

3. stunning!!

[Delphinus]

4. Sigh ...

how beautiful - thank you.

[annabanana]

5. A fitting remembrance on it's very last day.. Can't wait to see the shots

from its plunge.

[Baclava]

6. Best mission ever - remember how everyone protested it's plutonium reactor going into space?

Cassini - Dozens arrested in protest of plutonium-fueled space mission

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/9710/04/cassini/

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

8. I was accosted by a maniac with a petition in Orange County

Because NASA was going to nuke Jupiter and Saturn.

I also seem to recall a story as well about protestors harassing a delegation of British scientists who were guests of Caltech at the launch.

[Duppers]

11. People are ignorant idiots. nt

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

7. There should at least be an honorable mention for the Jupiter flyby

Those pictures were incredible: http://ciclops.org/ir_index/3/Jupiter-Encounter

[StarryNite]

9. Breathtakingly beautiful

[Duppers]

10. Stunning! The Day the Earth Smiled..

My favorite, I think.

[Baclava]

16. I like the IR image of Titan - it looks the most earthlike

[procon]

12. These breathtaking images leave me awestruck.

I am so appreciative that science people who have inspired generation with their vision and a hunger for knowledge. Thanks to their persistence, we are able to see this incredible project succeed, even despite the small minded, bean-counting naysayers.

I am so extremely humbled by the scope of everything that awaits us out there. What might we humans discover, what fantastic knowledge is waiting for us? Good speed to the next voyager that we send off into the dark in our unquenchable curiosity to explore where no man has gone before. Thanks too, for the imagination of all the science fiction writers who have let me dream along with them as we traveled to exotic alien worlds that now must pale in comparison to our own incredibly, gorgeous, Saturn.

[beam me up scottie]

13. Cassini: The dying of the light

Cassini is no more. At 10:31 according to its own clock, its thrusters could no longer hold its radio antenna pointed at Earth, and it turned away. A minute later, it vaporized in Saturn’s atmosphere.

Its atoms are part of Saturn now.

http://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakdawalla/2017/0915-cassini-the-dying-of-the-light.html

Goodnight Cassini, and thanks for all the science.

[oasis]

14. Great pix. Thanx

[irisblue]

15. I think of the best things "We The People..."

have done is push out and look at the stars.

[Scurrilous]

17. Nice!