[新闻] “卡西尼”号拍到“土卫六”和土星风暴 [酷图]

　CCTV.com消息（整点新闻）：“卡西尼”号土星探测器2号传回了她进入土星大气层时的照片，其中一张可以清楚地看到土卫六，还有一张捕捉到了土星大气层发生风暴的瞬间。

　　美国宇航局的科学家2号在位于帕萨迪纳喷气推进实验室举行的新闻发布会上表示，“卡西尼”号传回的照片中有两张让他们“惊讶不已”。

　　其中一张清楚地显示了“土卫六”上空厚厚地由碳氢化合物组成的大气层。橙色的“土卫六”在朦胧中显得更加神秘。“土卫六”又被称为“泰坦”，被认为是土星所有31颗卫星中最神秘、最富魅力的一颗。科学家认为组成“土卫六”的各种化学元素早在数十亿年前就已经存在于地球表面。

　　另一张照片捕捉到的是土星大气层发生风暴的瞬间。从照片上，科学家清晰地看到不同纬度的土星大气层发生风暴时的情景。

　　此前一天，“卡西尼”号已陆续向地球传回第一批土星环的照片。照片清晰地显示了土星环的结构，并显示出环的边缘比较分明。

　　“卡西尼”探测计划是一个多国合作计划， “卡西尼”号飞船于１９９７年１０月发射升空，今年7月1号进入绕土星轨道。

责编：辛梓

Titan in Natural Color
07.02.04  


Despite the views of the surface of Saturn's Titan moon provided by the Cassini spacecraft, the moon remains inscrutable to the human eye. Images taken with the narrow angle camera using red, green and blue color filters were combined to create this view.

In true-color images taken in visible wavelengths, Titan's photochemical smog, rich in organic material, gives the moon a smooth, featureless, orange glow.

The Cassini orbiter carries specially designed spectral filters that can pierce Titan's veil. Furthermore, its piggybacked Huygens probe will descend through the atmosphere in early 2005, giving an up-close-and-personal look at this mysterious orange moon.

The images making up this color view were obtained at a Sun-Titan-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 67 degrees, and from a distance of approximately 13.1 million kilometers (8.2 million miles) on June 10, 2004. The image scale is approximately 79 kilometers (49 miles) per pixel.

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 Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the ultraviolet imaging spectrograph at http://lasp.colorado.edu/cassini.

Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

土星风暴动画。

http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/61832main_PIA06083.gif

每个”小黑点“有多大呢？

每个”小黑点“都是“地球”级的。。。