ageofdestruction:

writ in water: Saturn, rings and shadows, photographed by Cassini, 9th December 2012.

Showing one of Cassini’s distinctive glitch modes; here, a curiously organic series of rings and arcs. 

Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI.

ageofdestruction:

long halloween: Saturn, rings, and Mimas, photographed by Cassini, 31st October 2005.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI.

ageofdestruction:

what are days for?: Pandora and Saturn’s rings in minimalist mode, photographed by Cassini, 10th December 2005.

More Space Minimalism.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI.

ageofdestruction:

calme: Titan, photographed by Cassini, 29th November 2012.

Au calme clair de lune triste et beau,
Qui fait rêver les oiseaux dans les arbres

— Paul Verlaine.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI.

ageofdestruction:

shamal: Saturn’s E-Ring, photographed by Cassini, 14th July 2011.

The E ring, second furthest out of Saturn’s rings, is made up of particles ejected from Enceladus’ cryovolcanos.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI.

ageofdestruction:

what does your soul look like?: Saturn’s F ring, photographed 39 times by Cassini, 18th October 2012.

More of the F ring. More gifs. More Space Minimalism.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI. Animation: AgeOfDestruction.

ageofdestruction:

gypsy: Rings and moons of Saturn, photographed by Cassini, 31st December 2005.

Nominally a photograph of the small moon Polyduces, which is not obviously visible. Polyduces is, however, co-orbital with Dione, which could be the otherwise unidentified moon at bottom.

See also: the dark (animated)and more space minimalism.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI.

ageofdestruction:

distance: Dione and Titan, photographed by Cassini, 6th November 2011.

Dione is 135,000km away from Cassini. Since Titan is actually almost 5 times as large as Dione, but here appears about 2/3rds the size, I’d estimate that Titan is about 1,000,000km away.

More Dione. More Titan.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI.

ageofdestruction:

arma virumque cano: Dione, photographed by Cassini, 18th May 2010.

The large crater at centre is Aeneas, at 15N 45W, named for the Trojan hero of Virgil’s Aenid. The canyon system at bottom right is the Tibur Chasmata, with the Latium and Larissa Chasma above it, all named for locations appearing in the Aenid. The double craters at top left are Romulus and Remus. 

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI.

ageofdestruction:

black page: Nominally a photograph of Saturn’s rings, taken by Cassini, 30th August 2009.

In The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman, an 18th century novel by Laurence Sterne that in some ways prefigures the modernist and postmodernist literary techniqures of some two hundred years later, a single page printed in solid black is used to mark the death of a friend.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI.

ageofdestruction:

luminous: Minimalist view of Saturn’s rings, photographed by Cassini, 30th December 2005.

Nominally a photograph of the moon Atlas. More Space Minimalism. 

[“Forget your perfect offering: / There is a crack in everything / That’s how the light gets in.” — L. Cohen]

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI.

ageofdestruction:

it dreamed of shelter: Tethys, photographed by Cassini, 3rd August 2005.

I don’t actually play Minecraft, but I watch a lot of youtube videos of it while doing other things (like this) and the other day I saw one where someone had thoughtfully included the fabled End Game Narrative. I actually found it quite touching:

“I like this player. It played well. It did not give up.

It is reading our thoughts as though they were words on a screen.

That is how it chooses to imagine many things, when it is deep in the dream of a game.

[…]

What did this player dream?

This player dreamed of sunlight and trees. Of fire and water. It dreamed it created. And it dreamed it destroyed. It dreamed it hunted, and was hunted. It dreamed of shelter.”

— Julian Gough / Markus Persson

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI.

ageofdestruction:

reunion: Ganymede and Jupiter, photographed by Cassini en route to Saturn, 2nd January 2001.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI.

ageofdestruction:

permissions: Jupiter, with moons and the Great Red Spot, photographed by Hubble Space Telescope, Autumn 1996.

The upper moon is Io and, I believe, the lower Callisto. Notice that above the Great Red Spot are the three White Oval storms (FA, BC, and DE). In 1998 BC and DE merged to become BE and in 2000 merged with FA to become Oval BA. In 2005 BA turned red.

See also: Animation from Proposal 6452.

(The date I gave in the earlier post is wrong; that was the date on the filed proposal document. There should, somewhere, be specific dates for each image, but I haven’t worked out where yet. Also I’ve changed my mind about the identity of that second moon.)

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI.

ageofdestruction:

lamplight: Scene from the Saturnian system, photographed by Cassini, 4th February 2006.

Saturn, rings, ring shadows, the small moon Prometheus (center) and an unidentified large moon.

Image credit: NASA/ESA/SSI.