Amazing New Movies of Saturn's Moons

RobGoldsmith writes "Like sugar plum fairies in 'The Nutcracker,' the moons of Saturn performed a celestial ballet before the eyes of NASA's Cassini spacecraft. New movies frame the moons' silent dance against the majestic sweep of the planet's rings and show as many as four moons gliding around one another."

Nice summary.

[lwsimon]

Its a cool video, but seriously? "like sugarplum fairies"?

Re:Nice summary.

[Jesus_666]

Well, like sugarplum fairies who are roughly spherical, made of rock, have a mass of several quadrillion tons and are orbiting a gas giant. If you consider that, the comparison is very apt.

Re:

[The Ultimate Fartkno]

I'd say it's more of a modern piece than ballet. Sure, they're moving on a nice straight line, but look at how the spherical lines of the costume diminish the human form. Notice the angular motion that never references the partner. If anything, I'd call it a descendant of Martha Graham or - even better - David Parsons. The subversion of what the human figure is expected to do is...

Umm... hang on. Isn't this nerdswholikedance.com?

Dammit! Wrong tab.

Hey, is that Ubuntu? How does that work? Compiled the new ker

Re:

[gafisher]

Like a slow, silent sarabande of Elton Johns.

Where is the sound?

[madsenj37]

Kidding.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

right here

http://www-pw.physics.uiowa.edu/space-audio/cassini/SKR1/

Re:Where is the sound?

[ibsteve2u]

That silence you hear is the RIAA.

Re:Where is the sound?

[houghi]

Your joke is better then mine. The only thing I could come up with was: "I would like to see a movie of Uranus."

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Only here will you find us going down the path of NASA's C-ass-ini probe penetrating the space near Uranus...
 
oh, how far we sink in our minds while watching the most boring video of round circles sliding across the screen in pong-like simplicity.

Original video

[Random Data]

TFA has a Youtube link. A higher resolution Quicktime is here [nasa.gov]. In Space no one can hear you Troisieme.

Re:

[Hurricane78]

The sad thing: I could make something like that in an hour in Maya and Photoshop, with 3 more moons too. And people would call mine “more realistic”. ^^

Isn't it

[SnarfQuest]

Isn't this just a preview of the movie for this book? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Moon_(novel)

Here's a better link

[ctmurray]

The original link was not working for me, here is a more direct route [youtube.com]

Re:

[bored_engineer]

Silly question, perhaps: Are you using Ubuntu? I've found that a few embedded Youtube videos haven't worked in the last two or three days.

Re:

[ctmurray]

I am using Firefox on a Mac and the embedded UTube never showed up on that first page. They show up on other sites.

Re:

[bored_engineer]

I'll look into the problem elsewhere. Thank you for replying!

Re:

[CheshireCatCO]

How about the original, direct route to the guys who made the movies?
http://ciclops.org/view_event/124/Cassinis_Holiday_Greetings [ciclops.org]

Re:

[Tablizer]

This is the link with the "Sugar Plum" song embedded that the original post referred to:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/whycassini/cassini20091223.html [nasa.gov]

The center right box has the Quicktime link. It shows 4 different sequences.
   

Almost as impressive as the mission itself

[Xeoz]

This mission was launched back in 1997. It didn't reach Saturn until 2004. Way back, in the days of yore (1997) the internet was just going mainstream, no one had a digital camera and a to get processing power equivalent to today's average desktop would require a room full of computers. I can't wait to see the results of the latest solar system explorers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini%E2%80%93Huygens [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[tunapez]

No mod points to give ya, but gotta second the anticipation. The equinox pictures were the latest of a long line of optical-candy for this untrained observer.

I really liked this line from the wiki:

A press release on February 3, 2009 shows yet another new moon found by the Cassini Spacecraft.

Source

[CheshireCatCO]

The guys who made the movies released the clips (separately, no annoying music) here [ciclops.org].

Shadow Play

[Tablizer]

Here's another movie of ring shadows crossing a small moon:

http://www.nasa.gov/mov/413372main_PIA11694_full_movie.mov [nasa.gov]

Description:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia11694.html [nasa.gov]

Re:

[Tablizer]

Here you can find more movies and stuff here:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/index.html [nasa.gov]

I found "Catching Big Sister" interesting because the haze in Saturn's atmosphere creates a contrast with the sharper moon edge.