Cassini Holiday Movies Showcase Dance of Saturn's Moons

Saturn's moons give Tchaikovsky's classic ballet, "The Nutcracker," a graceful new spin in this video compiled from some 61 images taken by the Cassini spacecraft.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Astronomy
• Space
• nasa
• cassini
• saturn

[wakefield666]

You know, it sucks that when I see something like this my first reaction is "nice rendering". For some reason, it seems far too regular with the moons apparently moving only horizontally that makes it look fake to me.

[cyachallenge]

Actually, it's perfectly natural for objects to orbit a larger mass like this. Gravity and the conservation of angular momentum come together to form this phenomenon.

[GoodOrion2113]

cool

[YTubeMoralAction]

There are four moons in this video

[TasnuArakun]

Is that a third moon i see moving very close to the outer ring?

[weetiewildrose]

Lol they look like sprites moving across the screen.

[mfnickster]

Lunar Orbiter 1 was b/w, but others like ATS-III were color.

I don't know if the 2001 crew used photos or not, but they had the option. Either way they did a hell of a job!

[patmansf]

Was it color?

I thought I read or heard that 2001 was not based on photographs, it doesn't quite match the pictures you see today.

[mfnickster]

@patmansf we had photos of the earth from space as far back as 1959. In 1966, Lunar Orbiter I took a pic of the earth from the moon.

[patmansf]

@wakefield666 : yeh ... I watched "2001 A Space Odyessey" a few months ago bluray / HD, and was amazed how well they pictured the earth from space given that no one had seen the earth from space at that time.