ND – Dark, Warm, Blue
I recently wrote about…
…the incredible and profound photography that NASA has performed within our own solar system. The amazing and detailed image of Jupiter’s yellow moon Io is a stunning achievement, but not alone in NASA’s catalogue of truly awesome and magical “snapshots”.
On 15th October 1997 NASA launched the Cassini-Huygens space probe on a roundabout journey to spend the major part of its life studying Saturn, its rings and some of its moons.
Out of all the images the mission sent back, this shot of Saturn is surely the most profound and thought-provoking, not to mention ethereally gorgeous.
This image was taken by Cassini, from the other side of Saturn, in its shadow from the sun, with the sun illuminating the huge ringed planet from “behind”.
The resultant halo glow around Saturn, and the way the rings are variably back-illuminated is a view that could never be captured from Earth, regardless of how good our local telescopes become. You actually have to go there in person, or send an electronic eye, in order to ever see such a magical view in our heaven’s.
Saturn from Cassini, Image (c) NASA
If other beings are looking into our solar system with their own telescopes, this may be a scene they would witness, but until we ventured there ourselves, we were never able to glimpse the beauty of one of our solar systems’ most recognisable bodies.
Have cosmic fun,
ND
(c) Nakedigit 2010
Nakedigit 