Enceladus, Saturn, 3D Stereo Fun
No, not enchilada, Enceladus. The Cassini space probe, launched in 1997, has been in orbit around Saturn since 2004 and has returned all sorts of ridiculously crazy-detailed data and pictures of Saturn and its moons.
Epic shots during Saturn’s equinox, when the rings were nearly edge-on to the sun and height variations cast long shadows:
Planetary Society, via NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute
Earlier this month it skimmed 64 miles above Enceladus, an icy moon that gets squished by tides from Saturn and as a result has geysers that vent up through cracks on the surface:
NASA / JPL / SSI / mosaic by Emily Lakdawalla
A mosaic of a cracks, or tiger stripe – Enceladus is about the width of Arizona, and the cracks are over a mile wide (a little wider that San Andreas Lake / Crystal Springs reservoir off 280).
NASA / JPL / SSI / mosaic by Astro0, unmannedspaceflight.com, via The Planetary Society
And here is a 3D stereo shot of the crevasse (rotated 90 degrees from the shot above):
(Sorry if you can’t cross your eyes to see the THIRD DIMENSION. On another planet, no less.)
And just so Republicans don’t think their tax dollars are wasted on a single icy planet, Cassini’s radar picked up what is believed to be methane lakes the size of Superior on Titan:
(NASA, University of Arizona, Planetary Society)
Burrito Justice 