Link: Cassini Imaging Diary.
(((They're sure reeling out the rhetoric for this one:)))
"Captain's Log
"October 15, 2007
"Ten years ago today, like a great mythological bird rising in brilliant magnificence from its funeral pyre, (((huh?))) a mighty Titan IV rocket, equipped to scale the gravity binding it and its precious cargo to Earth, leapt with a deafening roar from Cape Canaveral's Launch Pad 40 on a pillar of orange flames, veered gracefully towards the east, and quickly receded into the black of night. The bird was gone, never to return. And it carried a spacecraft that was destined for a seven-year journey around the inner solar system, through the asteroid belt, across the Jupiter-Saturn divide, into orbit around the ringed planet, and permanently into history.
"We Cassini explorers are marking today our Diamond Anniversary ... ten remarkable years of odyssey and discovery, ten years that have tried, challenged and defined us, but above all, ten years that have culminated in our astonishing exploratory adventures in the promised land that is the realm of Saturn. (((If you like a "promised land" that features bone-shattering radiation levels and icy moons with lakes of poisoned methane.)))
"In celebration, the Cassini Imaging Team is releasing today a large collection of spectacular images, maps, and movies taken by our faithful cameras of some of the most photogenic sights to be found in this sector of the solar system.
"Here you will find the shadow-scored, pastel-hued globe of Saturn (((or "glob of Saturn," given that it's kinda flat and has no surface)))) as it approaches northern spring, colorful Titan peering from behind the rings, telling details on the surfaces of some of Saturn's moons, a map of the surface of Titan updated with newly explored terrain, a never-before-seen sweeping survey of the unilluminated side of Saturn's main rings in natural color, and the view of majestic Saturn, attended by its major inner icy moons, seen from the orbit of Iapetus. (((Whew!)))
"You will also catch Prometheus in motion as it gores the F ring, and best of all ... a thrilling documentary of our recent historic flight over the mountain ranges of Iapetus. It is hard to imagine an environment more rich in splendor, more offering of scientific insight, than what we have unveiled at Saturn. We are fortunate to be surrounded by such sublime beauty..."
(((I suspected it for some time, now I'm pretty sure that the late Clark Ashton
Smith got a dayjob at NASA.)))
