Gigglebit: Saturn’s shadows as Cassini mission turns 10

1 Jul 2014

The planet Saturn, photographed by Cassini, 2004. Image via Wikimedia Commons

Gigglebit is Siliconrepublic’s daily dose of the funny and fantastic in science and tech, to help start your day on a lighter note.

Like any sector, technology has a serious side, and it is often issues within this serious side that make headlines or that organisations need to explore for their business. Malware! Data breaches! Cloud storage! Do I really need this software? What candidate has the best IT skills for this job, and what the heck is fog computing?

With Gigglebit, we turn the spotlight on humorous and/or amazing content about science and tech, because sometimes the lighter side should be taken seriously, too.

Today, we share an image first published on the NASA Cassini website in 2005 but which the European Space Agency (ESA) has rereleased in time for the 10th anniversary today of the international Cassini mission. Since entering Saturn’s orbit on 1 July, 2004, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft has been exploring the planet, its rings and its moons, and returning scientific data and some pretty spectacular images back to Earth, too.

In the image below, Saturn’s icy moon Mimas occupies the foreground while the planet’s rings cast shadows in dark streaks across the blue surface in the background.

Saturn's shadows

Tina Costanza was a journalist and sub-editor at Silicon Republic

editorial@siliconrepublic.com