Tag Archives: rhea

Enceladus, Rhea and Saturn’s rings

Enceladus and Rhea with Saturn's S rings in between

This wonderful sight is brought to us courtesy of the Cassini spacecraft which has been studying Saturn and its satellites over the last decade. Enceladus can be seen above Saturn’s rings while Rhea lies below them in this picture. The tiny Atlas (only 30 kilometers across) is also supposedly captured just to the left of Rhea, expertly hidden within one of Saturn’s rings. This picture was taken using Cassini’s narrow angle camera or Imaging Science System. Cassinia was somewhere between 2 million and 2.8 million kilometers from these Saturnian moons when this picture was taken.

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Cassini returns to Rhea

Cassini spacecraft returns to Saturn and its moon Rhea
Cassini returns to Saturn and its moon Rhea

It has been a couple of years since Cassini was orbiting in Saturn’s equatorial plane before it returned in March of this year. On its journey back from the higher inclination orbits, Cassini flew by the icy Saturnian moon Rhea. These two composite colour pictures of Rhea were take about 30 minutes apart using a combination of clear, green, infrared and ultraviolet spectral filters. Cassini’s narrow and wide angle camera’s were used for these pictures of Rhea.

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Inktomi crater on Rhea

The bright spot on Rhea is the Inktomi crater, named after a Lakota spirit
The bright spot on Rhea is the Inktomi crater, named after a Lakota spirit

In the early days of the (commercial) Internet, Inktomi was considered a search engine pioneer. It was a search leader and favorite of many users but as was the case in the heady days of the Internet bubble, it went went from top of the mountain to bottom of the heap (eventually bought by Yahoo) in the span of a few years. And while we may reminisce about the name Inktomi, this post is about a totally different Inktomi – a 1,500 kilometer wide crater seen here on the moon Rhea. We are huge fans of Cassini spacecraft’s work as it has long been studying Saturn and its moons. It took this picture in July 2013 while it was about 1.6 million kilometers from Rhea using its narrow angle camera.

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