Three days prior to today, NASA released a photo of Saturn’s three moons in one shot that was captured by Cassini on March 25, 2015. The image of the three moons in one shot is one of cinematic mastery.
The three moons captured are two of Saturn’s largest moons—Titan and Rhea—but also feature a smaller moon that lie in the inner orbit of the moons—Mimas.
How lucky do you have to be to get those three moons in one shot?
The three moons that can be seen in the image are as follows in largest-to-smallest order: Titan, Rhea, and Mimas. Each is in a markedly dissimilar state due to the moons’ different surface and atmospheric conditions at the taking of this image, as well as due to the angle at which the image was taken in. As if capturing three moons in one shot wasn’t enough, then capturing them in their crescent phase was even rarer.
What is the Cassini craft that captured the image?
The Cassini-Huygens is a spacecraft that was sent out by NASA that was able to inspect the environment around them with accurate measurements and capture images of said environment, the instruments utilized for inspection have more sensitive detection than ours that it is perfectly suitable for its journey in space. The spacecraft did not reach Saturn to begin its surveying until July 2004, where it remains to communicate data here on Earth about the conditions surrounding Saturn and the atmospheric space around it.
Are there any more photos like this one?
The image of the three moons in one shot is just one of many images captured by this spacecraft since its orbit around Saturn began in 2004. Other images that the Cassini-Huygens captured can be seen here, in all their space glory and the aforementioned image.
Now the wait begins to see what more images and interesting data about the space surrounding Saturn the Cassini-Huygens launched by NASA between the United States and Europe will bring home to Earth. One can only hope that more images such as the three moons in one shot unique to date, will surface.
