New Movie Shows Cassini's First Dive over Saturn

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New Movie Shows Cassini's First Dive over Saturn
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
May 3, 2017

A new movie sequence of images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows the
view as the spacecraft swooped over Saturn during the first of its Grand
Finale dives between the planet and its rings on April 26.

The movie comprises one hour of observations as the spacecraft moved southward
over Saturn. It begins with a view of the swirling vortex at the planet's
north pole, then heads past the outer boundary of the hexagon-shaped jet
stream and beyond.

"I was surprised to see so many sharp edges along the hexagon's outer
boundary and the eye-wall of the polar vortex," said Kunio Sayanagi, an
associate of the Cassini imaging team based at Hampton University in Virginia,
who helped produce the new movie. "Something must be keeping different
latitudes from mixing to maintain those edges," he said.
› DOWNLOAD VIDEO Cassini's First Fantastic Dive Past Saturn

Toward the end of the movie, the camera frame rotates as the spacecraft
reorients to point its large, saucer-shaped antenna in the direction of
the spacecraft's motion. The antenna was used as a protective shield during
the crossing of Saturn's ring plane.

As the movie frames were captured, the Cassini spacecraft's altitude above
the clouds dropped from 45,000 to 4,200 miles (72,400 to 6,700 kilometers).
As this occurred, the smallest resolvable features in the atmosphere changed
from 5.4 miles (8.7 kilometers) per pixel to 0.5 mile (810 meters) per
pixel.

"The images from the first pass were great, but we were conservative with
the camera settings. We plan to make updates to our observations for a
similar opportunity on June 29 that we think will result in even better
views," said Andrew Ingersoll, a member of the Cassini imaging team based
at Caltech in Pasadena, California.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European
Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Pasadena, California, manages the mission for the agency's Science
Mission Directorate in Washington. JPL is a division of the Caltech in
Pasadena. The Cassini imaging operations center is based at Space Science
Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information about Cassini, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/cassini

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

Updated on May 5, 2017, at 1:35 p.m. PDT to correct the date in paragraph
6.

News Media Contact
Preston Dyches
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-7013
preston...@jpl.nasa.gov

Steve Mullins
CICLOPS/Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
720-974-5859
me...@ciclops.org

2017-128