[X] My Assistant

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

Take a look at these images. Im not sure whether it might be "lens flare", which i've seen in quite a few images, or perhaps something else. What do you think?

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...eiImageID=49058

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...eiImageID=49059

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

This increases the interest of My idea of ending Cassini on a ring-grazing orbit with a periastron just above Saturn clouds.

[ljk4-1]

This increases the interest of My idea of ending Cassini on a ring-grazing orbit with a periastron just above Saturn clouds.

Should the Cassini team decide to go with your idea, this may be one of its last views sent back to Earth before its sudden, uh, stop:

http://www.sciencecenter.net/butlerart/htm/03-010.htm

Curious: If Cassini were sent into the rings, would it have time to return any images of individual particles before ultimately runnning into one?

Or are they planning to send it into Saturn's atmosphere as was done with Galileo at Jupiter to avoid contaminating Europa?

Or how about sending Cassini out of orbit to explore Chiron, the object between Saturn and Uranus found in 1977? A single flyby would be most interesting.

[David]

Should the Cassini team decide to go with your idea, this may be one of its last views sent back to Earth before its sudden, uh, stop:

http://www.sciencecenter.net/butlerart/htm/03-010.htm

That's a nice picture. No way to figure out what the size of the particles depicted is. Based on physics and observations, what are the maximal and minimal sizes of ring particles, anyway? I seem to recall 2m being mentioned as an upper bound, but I cannot recall where and possibly that's no longer true. I wonder if they might be much smaller. I find myself envisioning the rings as rivers of icy, sparkling sand flowing endlessly around Saturn.