Enceladus has 101 Geysers

Apparently there are a whole lot of geysers on Enceladus, more than 100. Well only one more, but there are sure to be others. Most of the geysers spotted so far appear along the four noticeably visible “tiger stripes” that appear in the southern hemisphere.

These are two of the most recent images to come from Cassini on this hot region of this medium sized moon. Nice seeing the detail on the geysers in the dark regions of the images where you can actually see where they are originating from on the surface.

Happy Revolution Around the Sun Card

As a fan of space exploration, you will have to love this birthday card from Chop Shop. An overly technical acknowledgment of someone’s birthday by defining exactly what it is. One additional complete orbital period moving around the sun. Even better, they design is beautifully letterpress printed both front and inside.

Above reveals the inside text — which plays it a little more safe with the messaging.

Rolf Olsen Photo Renders Neptune

The above is an interesting project to image the full Neptune system based on actual data returned by Voyager. According to the article published along with the image — Rolf Wahl Olsen composed this scene from actual images from the departing Voyager probe. The rings (which were never photographed in their entirety) are based on over-exposed images and then density mapped to a model which was applied to the scene. Even the stars are based on one of the over exposed images of the rings which revealed what the probe would have seen and that field data was inserted from and image generated by Google Sky.

Check Out Kurzgesagt

Especially if you have kids with an appreciation for science. These guys regularly do great animations that explain complex science — appropriate for all ages. They also promise a series of cool videos about cool moons in our solar system. So far they have only covered our own, next up… Mars’ Deimos and Phobos.

Saturnati XXIIX

In the words of Gordan Ugarkovic, the unchallenged freelance imager of our time — “On October 10th, Cassini wide-angle camera captured a set of 12 RGB footprints covering Saturn and the rings. Here's an attempt at compositing that data into a mosaic. It's not geometrically accurate, but I tried coaxing the data into at least looking nice”.

Enceladus Lost in the Ring Haze

The tiny but very active moon Enceladus is seen here lost within the E-Ring of Saturn. The moon, as many of us know, is quite active with cryo-volcanic geysers littered throughout the ridges of the “tiger stripes” found mostly in the moon’s southern hemisphere. Since most of the ejecta from Enceladus is jettisoned fast enough to escape the tiny moon’s gravity, most the material winds up orbiting Saturn itself and is therefore helping over a very long period of time to form Saturn’s E-Ring. This at least partly helps solve the question of where Saturn’s massive ring structure originates.

Image by Val Klavans.

Mars Curiosity Parachute Image

So this is not new, but my lack of activity on WS has me missing many great moments. Since I view this site as more of an archive of amazing space imagery… there is no expiration date on any image. Above is Mars Curiosity as it parachutes to the Martian surface as seen from orbit by Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Colorization was added by Ian Regan.

And a semi-recent image from Curiosity of Mount Sharp from August 2013.