For those who are also wondering about the briefly mentioned hexagon-shaped jet stream:<p><i>One hypothesis, developed at Oxford University, is that the hexagon forms where there is a steep latitudinal gradient in the speed of the atmospheric winds in Saturn's atmosphere. Similar regular shapes were created in the laboratory when a circular tank of liquid was rotated at different speeds at its centre and periphery. The most common shape was six sided, but shapes from three to eight sided were also produced. The shapes form in an area of turbulent flow between the two different rotating fluid bodies with dissimilar speeds</i><p>Source: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn's_hexagon" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn's_hexagon</a><p>Paper (paywalled): <a href="http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103509004382" rel="nofollow">http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0019103509...</a>
What amazes me the most about the Cassini mission is the drastic inclination changes they managed to achieve around Saturn (see the GIF in the hero section [1]). At first I thought the spacecraft must have had some serious delta-v budget, but in fact the bulk of it was provided by Titan [2] (noteworthy: this page also mentions the Cassini-Huygens communication issue that was uncovered during flight, for which the workaround was already mentioned on HN [3]). Truly amazing work from the navigation team.<p>[1] <a href="https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/2966/ring-grazing-orbits/" rel="nofollow">https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/2966/ring-grazing-orbits/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft/navigation/" rel="nofollow">https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft/navigation/</a><p>[3] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12483579" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12483579</a>
Every time I see photos of the big gas planets like this, I imagine earth orbiting the gas giant and feel very, very small and get what feels like mild vertigo from the overwhelming scale. This is truly wonderful
For more on the series of close orbits that will eventually take Cassini in between Saturn and its innermost ring, see the project site at <a href="https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/2974/cassini-makes-first-ring-grazing-plunge/" rel="nofollow">https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/2974/cassini-makes-first-ri...</a>
For people who are interested , check out Nasa's JunoCam project [0], which invites amateurs to conduct some of the target selection and image processing required on the imagery returned from Jupiter Space. It's also worth noting that JunoCam isn't one of the core scientific instruments on Juno. JunoCam is more like a public outreach initiative bolted on to the real mission, which is about studying the Jupiter's gravitational field, magnetosphere and atmospheric characteristics using a range of sensors. That doesn't of course detract from these wonderful images, but the primary science will not be based on JunoCam outputs<p>[0] <a href="https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing/" rel="nofollow">https://www.missionjuno.swri.edu/junocam/processing/</a>
> <i>remind you that we’ve lived a bold and daring adventure around the solar system’s most magnificent planet</i><p>Other than the one we're standing on, you mean.
The source: <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/cassini-beams-back-first-images-from-new-orbit" rel="nofollow">https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/cassini-beams-back-first-im...</a>