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[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

Now granted, we have had some great "grainy" images from the Cassini mission so far, but....

Where are the great images promised us? Yes...the probe is settling in on it's orbit around Saturn, but there has to be more images sent our way by now. Where are the actual color images, and I'm not talking about the "color enhanced" or ultraviolet/infrared ones either.

I'm searching for current images, but no dice. It seems like the lens cap is on. Even the ESA is silent. Something discovered that we are not supposed to know?

Whats going on?

[Chicago Astronomer - Astro Joe]

I got a mail this morning from "Astrobiology Magazine", describing the reason on the silence:


On July 12, the Cassini spacecraft emerged from behind the Sun after being in a week-long solar conjunction since July 5. The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Deep Space Network's Goldstone tracking station near Barstow, Calif., on July 12. The spacecraft is in excellent health and operating normally.

Just before Cassini began its transit behind the Sun, it snapped pictures (right) of Saturn's moons: Mimas, Tethys, Rhea and Iapetus.

Solar conjunction occurs when the Sun is between the spacecraft and Earth. During this time, the spacecraft conducts only limited science observations. Command and downlink capability is reduced to a minimum, with an uplink command file consisting of 10 commands sent every five minutes, 10 to 20 times a day. The purpose of this test is to assess the spacecraft's ability to receive commands from Earth when the signal path goes so close to the Sun.

More at the site: www.astrobio.net/news/article1077.html

I can't wait until the pics start coming in again!

[stargazer]

Just give it time to come in. They will start pouring in just like the ones from Mars

B

[starbux]

Superior conjunctions with the sun do tend to get in the way of scientific observations.