The Genius Gaze

The Grand Finale

A team of leading minds created him, all his 14 kilometers of cabling, his prime and back-up R-4D biorepellant rocket engines, powered by Plutonium-238. He was thrilled to be named after geniuses! After so many years, he could still recall fingers gliding over his high-gain antenna and radar bay. They jettisoned him into space and he did so well that they prolonged his mission by years. They loved him and he loved making them proud with his gaze. He did everything they pleased, down to his last day when by their request, he propelled himself into his own fiery death.

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Say hello to Cassini-Huygens, the first explorer of our jeweled planet Saturn.

An unmanned space probe, Cassini-Huygens entered the enigmatic depths of space with an overall mission to interweave itself within Saturn's rings for the following purposes:

Thank You, Cassini, For...

• Determining three-dimensional structure and behavior of Saturn's rings

• Determining Saturn's moons' surfaces/geologies

• Determining the nature/origin of dark material on Lapetus' (a moon of Saturn) leading hemisphere

• Measuring Saturn's magnetosphere

• Measuring Saturn's atmosphere

• Measuring Titan's (a moon of Saturn) clouds/hazes/surface.

I must correct myself, though. Cassini-Huygens was just Cassini during its latter days, after the Huygens portion of the probe landed on Titan in 2005, I believe.

Astronomers, physicists, and space-nerds alike were drooling over and ogling the final images produced by Cassini before he was sent to Saturn's upper-atmosphere to burn up after 20 years of spacing out.

Speaking of spacing out, have a listen to Gustav Holst's "Saturn" as you read the rest of this blog!

What did Cassini learn during its twenty years in space? Keep in mind, when a probe/rocket, etc. travels, it doesn't travel straight to its destinations, but uses the forces (gravity) of other planets/moons to slingshot itself along its course. This is called gravity assist. In order to get a gravity assist, a probe must travel pretty close to those planets/moons and in doing so, they can photograph and perform various analyses of that planetary body. While driving by Jupiter, Cassini was able to straighten up some facts about Jupiter's dark belts and the pressure (weather) exhibited within them. And I'm no physicist, but Cassini-Huygens also took part in scientists' tests regarding Einstein's Theory of Relativity.

Young Little Sarah's Stupid Thoughts on Space

• I thought that Saturn's rings were complete solids and that you'd be able to walk on them like on a CD. Turns out, Saturn's rings are made up of tiny to small to medium to large to very large particles that are so close together that they appear to create a solid.

• I thought that all planets (and even the sun) were made of some sort of rock/soil. I thought that as long as you had a heat-and-fire-resistant suit, you'd be able to walk on the sun. But, no. They're not solids. The sun, Neptune, Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus are made of gases. Earth, Mercury, Mars, Venus, and Pluto are made of various rock forms.

• As a little girl, I remember being very perplexed by images of the Earth and wondered why Earth appeared so round. If people stood on a giant ball, there wouldn't be any roundness. I felt that the roundness must have consisted of a layer we would fall through and that the lower layer, beneath that roundness, was the ground. I remember being too shy and afraid of sounding stupid to ask about it in second grade. But Tiffany Caruthers wasn't shy. She asked the teacher and I swooned over Tiffany so bad that I didn't hear the teacher's answer. But it turns out that little second-grade Sarah was sorta correct. When we look at images of Earth, we're looking at Earth's stratus-and atmosphere. Yes, we will fall through that, Sarah, and we will land on the ground below it.

• I thought all large planetary bodies were round until I was 31 years old (a few days ago) and my awesome meteorologist boyfriend informed me of how Saturn's moons are often ravioli-shaped.

Behold, Saturn's lovely ravioli/potato/pierogi moons (courtesy of Cassini).

Pandora

Prometheus

Pan

Janus

Atlas

Telesto

And the Death Star. I mean, Mimas.

Cassini flew by many, many of Saturn's 53 moons. But nothing, image-wise, has been more remarkable than Cassini's last few months when he wove in and out of Saturn's rings, documenting surfaces and consistencies that turn out are not so ice-skate-able. Although Saturn is known to be the jeweled planet, Jupiter also has a ring, you know. And so does Earth. However, Earth's ring is made out of itsy-bitsy anti-protons. Please enjoy these tear-jerking (to me and many others, anyway) images captured by science, technology, and genius (aka Cassini during his vacation in Saturn's game lands).

Behold Titan, the glorious moon on which Huygens landed.

Behold Saturn, God of Agriculture, nearing its summer solstice.

Behold, Saturn's narrow, disrupted F Ring.

Behold, Saturn in infrared.

Behold, Saturn's rings, non-calibrated.

Behold, another raw image of Saturn's rings.

Behold, the moon Pandora from Saturn's rings.

Behold, Saturn's north polar storm.

Behold, Cassini's final image taken before burning up in Saturn's atmosphere. This is an image of the night-side of the planet, illuminated by light reflected from the rings.

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