NASA’s Cassini Spacecraft Beam Back Spectacular Picture of Saturn’s Northern Region Showering in Sunlight
Cassini, the NASA-powered spacecraft is currently moving closer to its concluding stage and before its close out, the spaceship has beamed back some stunning images of the ringed planet Saturn again. In the images, Cassini captured the stunning views of Saturn’s North Pole, reflecting the entire northern province of the ringed planet taking bath in sunbeams. The image was taken in the late of 2016 by Cassini also shows a hexagon-shaped jet stream of Saturn which is fully enlightened with the sunlight.
Cassini clicked the images in late 2016 from a distance of around 1.2 million kilometers from Saturn. The picture is giving a clear and stunning view of the sunny side of the rings of Saturn, from around 51 degrees over the ring jet, said NASA. The picture was framed with the onboard wide-angle camera of Cassini on 9th September 2016. The spacecraft used a phantom filter to click the view which preferentially discloses wavelengths of near-infrared luminosity centered at 728 nanometers.
Along with the fully illuminated hexagon-shaped jet stream, the picture also is showing the darker region of the planet where the cloud thump is quite poorer. As said by NASA, this darker provenance is center to the hexagon. The suitable positioning of Cassini is advantaging the scientists of NASA to study the climatic patterns of Saturn, as the northern hemisphere of the ringed planet is approaching towards the Summer solstice.
To summon up, the mission of Cassini was launched in 1997 and till date, has facilitated the astronomers and scientists with a considerable amount of interesting practical and surprising facts about the ringed planet, Saturn, and its moons. The current year is the close-out year for the spacecraft and hence NASA’s scientists are expecting the spacecraft to deliver some useful details about the planet before reaching the closing stage.
From 1st January 2017, Cassini has already started the fifth Ring Grazing Orbit event and during this ring-grazing event, it’s noticeable light camera named as Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) will click the highest resolution views of Saturn’s B and C rings in the earlier part of the orbit, while in later stage, it will click the views of Saturn’s F and A rings.
