— NASA's Hubble confirms that galaxies are the ultimate recyclers — New observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope are expanding astronomers' understanding of the ways in which galaxies continuously recycle immense volumes of hydrogen gas and heavy…
— Frozen comet had a watery past, University of Arizona scientists find — For the first time, scientists have found convincing evidence for the presence of liquid water in a comet, shattering the current paradigm that comets never get warm enough to melt…
— Sugar-grain sized meteorites rocked the climates of early Earth and Mars — Bombardments of 'micro-meteorites' on Earth and Mars four billion years ago may have caused the planets' climates to cool dramatically, hampering their ability to support life, according…
— Astrophysicist: White dwarfs could be fertile ground for other Earths — Planet hunters have found hundreds of planets outside the solar system in the last decade, though it is unclear whether even one might be habitable. But it could be that the best place…
— Integral spots matter a millisecond from doom — ESA's Integral gamma-ray observatory has spotted extremely hot matter just a millisecond before it plunges into the oblivion of a black hole. But is it really doomed? These unique observations…
— MESSENGER spacecraft to swing into orbit around Mercury — At 8:45 p.m. EDT on March 17, the MESSENGER spacecraft will execute a 15-minute manoeuvre that will place it into orbit around Mercury, making it the first craft ever to do so, and…
— Baby stars born to 'napping' parents — Cardiff University astronomers believe that a young star's long 'napping' could trigger the formation of a second generation of smaller stars and planets orbiting around it…
— Oldest objects in solar system indicate a turbulent beginning — Scientists have found that calcium, aluminium-rich inclusions (CAIs), some of the oldest objects in the solar system, formed far away from our sun and then later fell back into the…
— Oxygen isotope analysis tells of the wandering life of a dust grain 4.5 billion years ago — Scientists have performed a micro-probe analysis of the core and outer layers of a pea-sized piece of a meteorite some 4.57 billion years old to reconstruct the history of its formation,…
Cassini hunting Enceladus 'tigers' with night vision
NASA's Cassini spacecraft will be hunting for heat signatures at the 'tiger stripes' in the dim south polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus on Friday, Aug. 13. The closest approach will bring the spacecraft to within about 2,500 kilometres (1,600 miles) of the surface of Enceladus.
The tiger stripes - which are actually giant fissures that spew jets of water vapour and organic particles hundreds of kilometres, or miles, out into space - are hard to see in the visible-light spectrum because winter is beginning to darken the moon's southern hemisphere. Cassini, however, has its own version of 'night vision goggles' - the composite infrared spectrometer instrument - which can track heat even when visible light is low. The instrument will map temperatures in the transverse fractures between the tiger stripes Cairo Sulcus and Alexandria Sulcus. It will also scan part of the tiger stripe Damascus Sulcus.
The relatively high flyby allows the composite infrared spectrometer to track the tiger stripe surface smoothly throughout the flyby. That kind of coverage is more difficult at lower altitudes because the surface whooshes by very quickly.
In addition, the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer will collect data on the composition of Enceladus, and the imaging cameras will take pictures.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.
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