Back in the 1980s, NASA's Voyager spacecraft made a brief flyby of Saturn's moons, providing us with a tantalising glimpse of new worlds. Now, the Cassini mission has finished the job, providing us with high-resolution, color maps of Saturn's six icy moons.
The images aren't just photos - they actually incorporate data from the ultraviolet and infrared spectrums, which makes the data more easily apparent to the human eye, which would struggle with the minor color differences between surfaces in natural light only. NASA has compared the new maps side-by-side with the Voyager images from thirty years ago, and the differences are incredibly stark.
The Cassini mission has been examining Saturn for a decade now - it celebrated its 10th birthday this past June. Among other feats, it discovered a large underground ocean of liquid water on one of Saturn's moons earlier this year. Its latest accomplishment might not be so significant, but is sure is pretty. [ NASA via Gizmag]
Entities 0 Name: Saturn Count: 4 1 Name: NASA Count: 3 2 Name: Cassini Count: 2 Related 0 Url: http://ift.tt/1z7tNb5 Title: Tour Saturn's icy moons with new NASA color maps - CNET Description: NASA releases impressive before and after images of some of Saturn's most famous moons, revealing modern color maps with gorgeous detail. Saturn is a bit of a moon hoarder. It has 62 known moons. It has so many moons, not all of them have even been named.
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