Wrapping Up Cassini’s Third Year
It’s hard for me to believe that Cassini’s four year nominal mission is three-fourths completed, but exactly three years ago today I was hosting a packed house at the University of Colorado’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics to witness the successful arrival of Cassini into orbit around Saturn. The Cassini web site at JPL has a slide show of the highlights of the third year in orbit, and lo and behold my own false-color rendition of the rings from our stellar occultation data is featured in the show. Go here to see the link to the slide show, and here for the picture. Speaking of occultations, our final stellar occultation of the rings of the current phase of the mission was successfully completed last week and we now have a break until early next year to digest and analyze the data we have on the ground.