dangerous-disposition:

somethingusefulfromflorida:

jamesternes:

I always forget that gas giants are, you know, made of gas, and not just smooth plastic color. The atmosphere is full of clouds, and the entire planet is atmosphere!

OP is not actually Cassini&rsquos last picture. That is artwork that NASA put out years before Cassini&rsquos Grand Finale. It&rsquos gorgeous and likely a fairly accurate depiction of what Saturn looks like up close. But it is not Cassini&rsquos last image.

This is actually Cassini&rsquos final image, taken one day before it burned up in Saturn&rsquos atmosphere.

This is looking down at Saturn, and it&rsquos being illuminated by Saturn&rsquos rings which reflect sunlight down onto the &ldquosurface” of Saturn.

Here is the &ldquonatural colour” edit of this image (based on how we&rsquove observed Saturn to look from Earth)

This was taken during Cassini&rsquos descent, and is looking at the spot where Cassini would soon enter the atmosphere and burn up. Saturn has a layer of haze that obscures much of the storms and cloud activity from view in visible light (Jupiter doesn&rsquot have that haze so that&rsquos why we can see the storms), but at the same time Cassini took an image in the infrared spectrum as it descended:

So this is part of the same image, but in infrared so you can see the storms. The oval on this image marks where Cassini later entered Saturn&rsquos atmosphere and completed its 13-year mission.

So while the art in OP is of Saturn and Cassini, and possibly is a realistic rendition of Cassini&rsquos final views, that is not the view that Cassini sent back to us.

Now, here is Cassini&rsquos final full mosaic of Saturn, titled A Farewell to Saturn

I like to view this image as Cassini&rsquos true last image, the last image that was taken not as part of its end, but as an end to its long mission.

Anyway, Cassini and its Grand Finale has a lot of personal importance to me, so here are some of my favourite images taken by Cassini

&ldquoThe Day the Earth Smiled”

&ldquoWith the sun&rsquos powerful and potentially damaging rays eclipsed by Saturn itself, Cassini&rsquos onboard cameras were able to take advantage of this unique viewing geometry.”

&ldquoTranslucent Arcs”

&ldquoA Song of Ice and Light”

&ldquoSaturn’s moon Enceladus drifts before the rings and the tiny moon Pandora in this view that NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured on Nov. 1, 2009. The entire scene is backlit by the Sun, providing striking illumination for the icy particles that make up both the rings and the jets emanating from the south pole of Enceladus, which is about 314 miles (505 km) across.”

&ldquoReflection of Sunlight off Titan Lake”

&ldquoThis image shows the first flash of sunlight reflected off a hydrocarbon lake on Saturn&rsquos moon Titan. The glint off a mirror-like surface is known as a specular reflection. This kind of glint was detected by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer (VIMS) on NASA&rsquos Cassini spacecraft on July 8, 2009. It confirmed the presence of liquid in the moon&rsquos northern hemisphere, where lakes are more numerous and larger than those in the southern hemisphere.”

&ldquoSpotting Saturn&rsquos Northern Storm”

&ldquoNASA&rsquos Cassini spacecraft captures a composite near-true-color view of the huge storm churning through the atmosphere in Saturn&rsquos northern hemisphere.

This storm is the largest and most intense observed on Saturn by NASA&rsquos Voyager or Cassini spacecraft. The storm is still active. As scientists have tracked this storm over several months, they have found it covers 500 times the area of the biggest of the southern hemisphere storms observed earlier in the Cassini mission (see PIA06197 and PIA12576). The shadow cast by Saturn&rsquos rings has a strong seasonal effect, and it is possible that the switch to powerful storms now being located in the northern hemisphere is related to the change of seasons after the planet&rsquos August 2009 equinox.”

Anyway, there are so many beautiful images, I definitely recommend people go check them out.