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Cassini spacecraft’s photos of Saturn, rings & moons

By Associated Press

Sept. 12, 2017

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This March 25, 2015 image made available by NASA shows the crescents of three of Saturn's moons - Titan, right; Mimas, bottom, and Rhea, left. Titan appears fuzzy because of its cloud layers. Rhea's cratered surface shows a rough texture.
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This April 26, 2017 photo made available by NASA shows turbulent clouds at Saturn's north pole, as seen from the Cassini spacecraft.
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This Feb. 17, 2005 image made available by NASA shows plumes of water ice and vapor from the south polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The activity is understood to originate from the moon's subsurface ocean of salty liquid water, which is venting into space.
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This Aug. 11, 2013 image made available by NASA shows Saturn and one if its moons, Titan, seen from the Cassini spacecraft. Titan's crescent nearly encircles its disk due to the small haze particles high in its atmosphere scattering the incoming light of the distant Sun.
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This Feb. 10, 2015 image made available by NASA shows the slightly irregular horizon of the Saturnian moon, Rhea. The surface of Rhea (949 miles or 1527 kilometers across) has been sculpted largely by impact cratering. On more geologically active worlds like Earth, the craters would be erased by erosion, volcanoes or tectonics.
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This Nov. 13, 2015 composite image made available by NASA shows an infrared view of Saturn's moon, Titan, as seen by the Cassini spacecraft. The near-infrared wavelengths in this image allow the cameras to penetrate the haze and reveal the moon's surface.
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This Aug. 17, 2015 image made available by NASA shows the rough and icy crescent of Saturn's moon Dione as seen by the Cassini spacecraft.
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This Sept. 24, 2015 image made available by NASA shows the moons Enceladus, foreground, and Tethys temporarily aligned off the plane of Saturn's rings, as seen from the Cassini spacecraft.
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This Aug. 23, 2014 image made available by NASA shows the fluid dynamics in Saturn's uppermost cloud layers.
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This Aug. 14, 2014 image made available by NASA shows shadows of Saturn's rings projected on the southern hemisphere of the gas giant. The moon, Tethys, is at lower right, and Mimas, is seen as a slight crescent against Saturn's disk above the rings, at about 4 o'clock.
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This May 21, 2015 image made available by NASA shows Saturn's moon Dione crossing the face of the gas giant, in a phenomenon astronomers call a transit. Transits play an important role in astronomy and can be used to study the orbits of planets and their atmospheres, both in our solar system and in others.
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This May 4, 2014 image made available by NASA shows the persistent hexagonal cloud pattern on Saturn's north pole, as seen from the Cassini spacecraft. The hexagon is similar to Earth's polar vortex, which has winds blowing in a circular pattern around the polar region, and is nearly 25,000 kilometers (15,000 miles) across. Nearly four Earths could fit inside it.
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This July 19, 2013 image made available by NASA shows Saturn's rings and planet Earth, center right, as seen from the Cassini spacecraft.
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This Aug. 12, 2009 composite image made available by NASA shows Saturn in equinox seen by the approaching Cassini spacecraft. Saturn's equinox occurs only once in about 15 Earth years.
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This Dec. 3, 2015 image made available by NASA shows three of Saturn's moons - Tethys, above, Enceladus, second left, and Mimas, seen from the Cassini spacecraft.
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