Goodbye Earth
The Cassini wide angle lens captured Earth 900 million miles in the distance on July 19. When I saw a crop of this photo in Space News this evening, it caught my breath.
Saturn is a gem of the skies, 100x as massive as Earth, sporting supersonic winds and 62 moons — the largest of which, Titan, is bigger than Mercury and the only moon with a thick atmosphere. Hello twisted sister.
Saturn’s rings are 99.9% ice and extend out 80km, more than doubling the radius of the planet, but I never imagined how thin they are, averaging only 20m thick (an average building in Manhattan).
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