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Space Science

Cassini's Iapetus Flyby 69

Posted by samzenpus from the to-the-moon dept.
cupofjoe writes "The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is reporting on the Cassini spacecraft's recent close flyby of the Saturnian moon Iapetus, highlighting images taken from distances 100 times closer than the Voyager 2 flyby in 1981. Near real-time images were shown to Cassini mission team members in a presentation at JPL yesterday, during which a pre-recorded message from Arthur C. Clarke was played to the audience. Clarke wished them luck on the flyby, reminding all present that he had included a pretty accurate description of Iapetus in the original 1968 text of "2001: A Space Odyssey", years before Voyager made its flyby."
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Cassini's Iapetus Flyby More

Cassini's Iapetus Flyby

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  • I'm not BadPunGuy (Score:5, Funny)

    by BadAnalogyGuy ( 945258 ) <BadAnalogyGuy@gmail.com> on Thursday September 13, 2007 @01:34AM (#20584351)
    But I'd love to hear the impetus to check out Iapetus after taking that turn at Saturn. The tan tie of Titan and...

    Oh fuck off. I haven't slept in days.

  • Odd (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 13, 2007 @01:36AM (#20584361)
    The spacecraft went into safe mode for the first time in four years directly after the Iapetus survey. NASA blames in on a cosmic ray. I think aliens have just captured the spacecraft and deleted/faked the important data.
    • Yeah, they reckon that the safing event was caused by "a solid state power switch that was tripped due to a galactic cosmic ray hit," but really, it was most likely an alien which tripped and fell on the switch. (After downloading fake data through a floppy disk)

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Cassius Corodes ( 1084513 )
      Maybe it wasn't shut down properly last time?

    • Re:Odd (Score:5, Funny)

      by Waffle Iron ( 339739 ) on Thursday September 13, 2007 @10:45AM (#20589017)
      The good news: the probe took pictures from 100 times closer than Voyager.

      The bad news: all the pictures came back at 640x480 resolution with 4-bit color depth, and had the words "Safe Mode" superimposed over each of the four corners.

  • Good ol' ACC... (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Clarke wished them luck on the flyby, reminding all present that he had included a pretty accurate description of Iapetus in the original 1968 text of "2001: A Space Odyssey", years before Voyager made its flyby.
    Just in case they forgot it wasn't all about them...

  • Pretty accurate description of Iapetus? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by nacturation ( 646836 ) <nacturation@gmai l . c om> on Thursday September 13, 2007 @01:58AM (#20584487) Journal
    That's not how I read it. FTA:

    This is a particularly exciting moment for fans of 2001: A Space Odyssey - because that's where the lone astronaut Dave Bowman discovers the Saturn monolith, which turns out to be a gateway to the stars. Chapter 35 in the novel is titled 'The Eye of Iapetus', and it contains this passage:

            "Iapetus was approaching so slowly that it scarcely seemed to move, and it was impossible to tell the exact moment when it made the subtle change from an astronomical body to a landscape, only fifty miles below. The faithful verniers gave their last spurts of thrust, then closed down forever. The ship was in its final orbit, completing a revolution every three hours at a mere eight hundred miles an hour - all the speed that was required in this feeble gravitation field."

    After more than 40 years, I cannot remember why I placed the Saturn monolith on Iapetus.
    The submitter makes it sound like a boast but in reality it's simply saying that enthusiasts will appreciate the reference.
     

    • Even if it's a boast (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tkrotchko ( 124118 ) * on Thursday September 13, 2007 @08:32AM (#20586715) Homepage
      Even if it was a boast, Arthur C Clarke is allowed that little bit of ego. Besides being an engaging write, he was truly a SCIENCE fiction writer. I don't need to tell you all he's predicted, accomplished, and contributed to popular culture; you can do that yourself (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur_Clark).

      Truly an icon, and I glad he was around to see some sort of space exploration take place, even if we didn't accomplish everything he predicted.
      • I agree. Clarke is one of the last of the great science fiction writers who got started in the Golden Age of SF from mid-20th century. If he doesn't want to boast, we can boast for him. The guy's done good in his career and we geeks are lucky to have him.

      • Re: (Score:1, Flamebait)

        by kamapuaa ( 555446 )
        According to the Wikipedia article, the extent that he predicted was Geostationary orbits (although he wasn't the first to describe the idea, nor was he an influence on the actual development of the satellite), and the extent of his pop culture contributions was assisting Kubrick with 2001, and then later novelizing the movie.

        As a kid I liked the 2001 novel, I read some of his other works. Mostly they just described ridiculous nerd utopias without any real characters or character development, and constant

      • Re:Even if it's a boast (Score:4, Informative)

        by pclminion ( 145572 ) on Thursday September 13, 2007 @04:21PM (#20595175)
        He's not just a fiction writer. I guess it's easy to forget that the man invented the communications satellite.

    • The submitter makes it sound like a boast but in reality it's simply saying that enthusiasts will appreciate the reference.

      You realize, of course, that my portrayal of Mr. Clarke's message said nothing about the monolith or his choice of Iapetus as its location. I was merely referring to the fact that, as is evidenced by the text of "2001", his physical description of Iapetus is eerily accurate for the time, all things considered. Believe me, that fact has given rise to more than one website's claim of

      • You realize, of course, that my portrayal of Mr. Clarke's message said nothing about the monolith or his choice of Iapetus as its location. I was merely referring to the fact that, as is evidenced by the text of "2001", his physical description of Iapetus is eerily accurate for the time, all things considered. Believe me, that fact has given rise to more than one website's claim of conspiracy...

        While the text in 2001 may have been accurate, what I was responding to was that the summary appeared to assert that he (specifically) reminded them that he described it accurately whereas in the transcript there's no mention of accuracy.

        As for the perceived transitive nature of the verb "reminded"...actually, that's not how I meant it at all. I suppose I intended more to imply that the audience was reminded by inference, but in my excitement probably failed to make that clear. My bad.

        No worries. You can always count on someone on /. for pedantry. :) And now that you mention it, interpreting "reminded" in that light makes it much clearer. It wasn't a direct reminder, but those who read the book were probably reminded by its mere mention.

        I'm also with the poster that suggests that Clarke is due a little ego-stroking now and then...

        You make it

    • I read the original 1968 book way back when I was in grade school somewhere around 1977 or 78, long before I ever saw the movie, so I always thought that Japetus was the correct name. I also thought the booked rocked, and when I finally did see the movie much later when I was in high school, I thought the movie was so confusing that it stunk, and thus have never cared much for the movie.

  • amazing photos (Score:2, Interesting)

    by cathector ( 972646 )
    i'm at a loss to explain those inky black patches.
    wonderful photos.

    • Re:amazing photos (Score:5, Informative)

      by sighted ( 851500 ) on Thursday September 13, 2007 @02:11AM (#20584547) Homepage
      One side of Iapetus is dark, the other as bright as snow. As Iapetus moves in its orbit around Saturn, the dark side faces forward, and many scientists think that the moon swept up the dark material, which might originally have come from another moon. There are some more great shots on another Planetary Society blog entry [planetary.org], and of course on the Cassini raw images feed [nasa.gov] from NASA.
      • huh. so the notion is that there is/was an off-surface flow of dark material around the moon, being occasionally deposited on [more or less] prominences ? i dunno. it's the dramatically sharp boundaries between the regions which leave me agog. thanks for the links.
      • "...the other as bright as snow."

        Yes, that is exactly correct. You have a good eye.

        It's nice to see photos from home. It appears the family has kept things pretty much the same since I left. I can't wait to get back. I look forward to celebrating the Gostro-mik'awqgie Festiv'al with all my friends.

        I miss my home...
      • I've seen those images on TV recently. I think they're actually pictures of the new Dominoes Oreo dessert pizza.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by gigantu' ( 1156191 )
      What looks dark can be bright at a different wavelength. It depends on what sensors you are using.
      Another fascinating black "thing" on Mars: http://hirise.lpl.arizona.edu/PSP_003647_1745 [arizona.edu] . But in this case is just a hole in the ground.

    • Still enigmatic (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      i'm at a loss to explain those inky black patches.

      As am I. We can image Iapetus down to 36' of resolution and still not understand what we are seeing! The image with the sparse dark patches is the most amazing. If you look you can see clear embayment relationships. The black stuff seems to fill low lying areas like a liquid. It reminds me a little of the lake bed terrain near the Huygens lander on Titan and also the radar images of the lake terrain. There are even islands of light material poking up throu

  • safe mode? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Cassini shutdown into safe mode... hmm didn't know it ran windows.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      yeah, though if it ran Linux, it would freeze trying to get into safe mode, and then tell you on the screen that you don't have a graphics card.

  • Inky Stains (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Trouvist ( 958280 ) on Thursday September 13, 2007 @02:33AM (#20584639)
    If you look closely at what they describe as "Inky Stains" on Iapetus, they look more like burst bubbles. If you consider a consistent direction for the sun's light, and look at the pictures that overlap with different shades of shadow, it looks like the surface of the satellite was covered by air pockets and they happened to either cave in or break. The edges seem slightly too jagged and defined for them to be "stains." Compare "Inky stains on a frozen moon" to "Iapetus Flyby Raw Preview #13" and you can see what I'm talking about. I don't think those are discolorations, they look like caverns.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by RuBLed ( 995686 )
      I thought it was our wall, after the rain...

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by naam00 ( 1145163 )
      Can't find that second image you mention, but you do realize the light direction is from below in the first one, don't you? Those are just craters, not bubbles. The 'stains' could still be holes or caves I guess, but bubbles?

      • Re:Inky Stains (Score:4, Interesting)

        by OldBus ( 596183 ) on Thursday September 13, 2007 @09:41AM (#20587957)
        When I first saw the image I thought they were bubbles too. After reading your post I flipped the image 180 degrees and they were revealed as craters. Just goes to show how much our brains are wired to see light coming from the top...

        Anyway, I suspect the dark stains are probably not caves as when you enlarge the image you can see wisps of the white material on the dark stuff. It would be interesting to know if it was the dark material that caused the craters or whether whatever caused the craters revealed the dark material under the white surface.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by DrVomact ( 726065 )

        ...you do realize the light direction is from below in the first one, don't you? Those are just craters, not bubbles. The 'stains' could still be holes or caves I guess, but bubbles?

        You're absolutely right about the craters--it took me a few minutes to adjust my brain to see this picture correctly. At first, I thought the "inky stains" were on top of high spots in the terrain, but when I analyzed the way the light was falling on this scene, I realized I was falling victim to the familiar illusion where de

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Durrok ( 912509 )
      Those craters could be miles deep or just a few feet. The astronauts on the moon had the same misconception, grabbing rope to lower themselves down into craters thinking it was a sharp incline when in fact it was just a gentle slope. Shadows can be very deceptive.
    • Well then, how do you explain that? [flickr.com]
      • When you look at it on the higher-resolution image, there is fading around it, and if they were "bubbles" then that could be a pile of debris stacked inside it?
      • If light actually falls from below in the image, it looks more like pools of black ink accumulating in the bottom of craters and your circled anomaly looks just like a small protrusion in a crater, rising above the "ink". Makes me wonder what spectrum these images actually were shot in, I'm pretty sure it's not actual colors we're seeing but rather near-IR or something.

  • Neat stuff... (Score:5, Informative)

    by The Master Control P ( 655590 ) <ejkeever @ n e r d s h a ck.com> on Thursday September 13, 2007 @03:16AM (#20584813)
    Go to the "raw images" pages and look at pages 10-11, they've got some awesome "death star" pics. And images 305-320 have some "inky stains" that might make good desktops...
  • Here's hoping it didn't blink!
  • The Evil Face [nasa.gov] on Iapetus ! (May have to squint a little to see it.) Must be angry at being disturbed.

    (And, if there are any Cydonia freaks out there, no, I don't think it's a real face. It just jumped out at me when I saw this [nasa.gov].)
  • Thats no moon... oh wait, yes it is. My bad.

  • Other way around.... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mdm-adph ( 1030332 )
    Dark patches over a white surface? If you ask me, it looks like the other way around -- take a look:

    http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/casJPGFullS33/N00092126.jpg [nasa.gov]

    Doesn't it look like the white is covering the black and slowly un-covering it due to craters forming?

  • Odd... (Score:3, Funny)

    by argStyopa ( 232550 ) on Thursday September 13, 2007 @09:44AM (#20587989) Journal
    Doesn't anyone find it funny that Cassini was *allegedly* hit by a cosmic ray event that tripped it into safe mode JUST as it was sliding around Iapetus?

    The last time this happened was 4 years ago.

    Coincidence? Ask Beagle! /tinfoil hat

  • Ridge Flyover GIF(shameless selflink) (Score:5, Interesting)

    by brownpau ( 639342 ) on Thursday September 13, 2007 @10:34AM (#20588791) Homepage
    I tried making an animated GIF of the equatorial ridge flyover photos [brownpau.com] just to get a sense of Cassini's motion as it flew by Iapetus. A bit jumpy, but wow.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by HTH NE1 ( 675604 )
      It reminds me of the opening credit sequence of the last series of Blake's 7.

    • Beautiful, thanks. That's amazing. It looks like the moon was split in half and then somewhat gently crunched back together, not quite evenly. There's a couple of mid-size craters I can see (from this and other photos, and a lot of smaller ones) that overlay the fault, and it's covered with ejecta debris in some places, but the event still has to be relatively young, maybe a billion years or so. Did the moon came very close to the Roche limit of Saturn at one time when it wasn't quite solid? Weird
    • Nice job on the GIF. I'm not usually one to toot my own horn, but this is also a perfect application of the thing I mention in my .sig. Basically, I use PHP to generate some repetitive javascript which, when combined with an image map, creates a neat effect. Source code and examples are here, [pixelcity.com] and here is this technology applied to the Iapetus pics. [pixelcity.com]

      I'm too late to get modded up, so tell your friends! :-)
  • I recall reading this in a relatively recent edition of 2001- very cool stuff: (from wikipedia) - In Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), astronaut Dave Bowman finds an enigmatic alien monolith waiting for him on the surface of Iapetus. Iapetus' two tone coloration is caused by a vast white ellipse on the moon's surface, with the monolith appearing as a black dot in its exact center. When the Voyager space probes arrived at Iapetus thirteen years later, they discovered that there was indee

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