It’s a disconcerting thought, but somewhere out there lies a cadaver… blinking.

Beyond the fright, however, lies the hope for the suffering–scientists have found a way to make an eyelid blink using electrical charges. It’s a big development that can help people with eyelid paralysis who face the possibility of going blind.

Currently, eyelid paralysis is treated either by transferring a muscle from the leg into the face–a lengthy process that may not be suitable for elderly or sick patients–or suturing a gold weight inside the eye, which helps close the eye with the aid of gravity. But neither solution has many takers. Searching for an alternative, surgeons at the University of California at Davis experimented with artificial muscles with six donated human cadavers.

LiveScience reports:

The artificial muscle they used acts like human muscle by expanding and contracting in response to electrical input. Developed by engineers at SRI International of Palo Alto, Calif., the muscle includes a piece of soft acrylic or silicone sandwiched between carbon particle electrode layers. When a current is applied, the outer layers get pressed together and squash the soft center, expanding the artificial muscle as a whole. When the charge is removed, it contracts.

Scientists say this is the first wave of artificial muscle being used in biological systems. In the future, the procedure may be used to treat patients with facial paralysis caused by stroke, injury, or combat. The findings were reported in the January-February issue of journal Archives of Facial Plastic Surgery.

Researchers say the procedure might be available for patients with eyelid paralysis over the next five years. They are now conducting their studies on live gerbils. Phew! That’s so much better than the thought of bagged, tagged, and blinking cadavers.

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Image: University of California Regents

Amputation patients only receiving Motrin for pain.

Doctors in Haiti are in critical need of medical supplies. Like so many, I am heartbroken and wish there were more I could personally do to help. Please join me in making a donation to the relief effort and encourage others to do so as well.

Organizations where you can contribute:

American Red Cross International Response Fund
AmeriCares Help For Haiti
Direct Relief International
Doctors without Borders
HaitiArise
Haiti Emergency Relief Fund
Mercy Corps
Oxfam
Partners In Health
UNICEF
Yele Haiti

This week federal officials said they want to ban the importation of nine large and exotic snake species. The move is designed to quell the spread of those slithering reptiles that have gotten loose and thrived in Florida and especially in the Everglades, and that threaten to spread further across the country.

More than a million of these snakes—including the giant Burmese python, boa constrictors, and several kinds of anaconda—have come to the United States in the last 30 years as pets. But invariably, over the years, some slithered loose — or were released by owners who found their reptile[s] more than they could handle. Today, many thousands nest wild in Florida’s suburban yards, parks and the Everglades [Science News]. At least one of the species, the northern African rock python, is considered dangerous to humans.

The importation ban is not all: Interior Secretary Ken Salazar also said the government would like to ban interstate sales of these snakes already inside the United States. That means someone couldn’t drive down to Texas and buy a baby python and then legally bring it home to Maryland. It would even become illegal to tote a long-owned boa across states lines — from New York to New Jersey, for instance — when someone moved [Science News]. Whether dedicated snake lovers would ditch their pets upon moving just because the government says so, however, remains to be seen.

Florida officials, for their part, have adopted the typical response to an animal reaching out-of-control numbers: hunting season. The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission already allows licensed hunters to kill snakes they encounter during small-game and other hunting seasons in wildlife management areas. But the agency also intends to create a two-month season specifically for the troublesome snakes, said spokeswoman Gabriella Ferraro [Miami Herald].

The Interior Department hopes to formally propose the new rules in February. We’ll see whether it’s too little too late for the Everglades’ ecological balance. As conservation expert Stuart Pimm wrote for National Geographic, the Burmese python could be emerging as the top predator, displacing the famous alligators there.

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Discoblog: When Animals Invade, Part II: Pythons Taking Over South Florida
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Image: flickr / benjgibbs

I make no bones about the fact that I love the HiRISE camera on board the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. With its 50 centimeter (18 inch) resolution, it’s returned one astonishing picture after another. I’ve picked several for my annual Top Ten Astronomy Pictures, too.

And now NASA has announced something incredibly cool: they are allowing the public to choose locations for HiRISE to image! It’s easy enough. Just go to their website, register, and then you can look at other suggested spots or suggest one yourself.

I suggested one myself: re-imaging a black pit on Mars that I featured in my Top Ten pictures of 2007:

This is a rimless pit, basically a cavern on Mars. I suggested they image it again at a different time of day, yielding three-dimensional information about it. The change in the Sun angle will allow scientists to see how steeply it’s sloped, where the rocks sit, and also possibly illuminate a different part of the pit walls. It would be very interesting to see if any of the rocks have changed as well, maybe settling downslope since the prior image was taken.

I hope they pick mine, but go there and pick your own. You can search the extensive (11,000+ images and counting) HiRISE archive for interesting things, or poke around the web. And yes, the Face has already been suggested though for some reason the person suggesting it didn’t mention the Face, and just said it was an erosional feature of interest. I think that’s pretty funny. Actually, lots of suggestion have been submitted for that region in Cydonia, unsurprisingly!

But there’s a lot of surface to map on Mars, so give it a shot. And if they do wind up picking yours, let me know! That’ll be worth a followup post.

Last week I participated in a three-day course on energy taught by Michael Webber at UTAustin. Very shortly, I’ll have more to say on the subject, but in the meantime, it’s a good opportunity to highlight an interesting new website from the National Academies called What You Need to Know About Energy. It’s a means to help visitors understand the ways we use energy, where it comes from, and how energy efficiency and alternative sources can figure into our energy future. The more we know, the better equipped we’ll be to engage in the ongoing debate about energy policy. Here are the details:

The site provides balanced and reliable information about our energy sources, uses, and options for the future. Take a quiz to see what you already know about energy. Explore “Our Energy System” for a quick and clear overview of the energy sources we depend on in the United States and how they are used, including what each source contributes to carbon dioxide emissions. Learn compelling facts about oil, coal, natural gas, nuclear energy, and renewable sources, such as solar and wind, including the pros and cons of each source. Compare a few cars and household appliances in “Understanding Efficiency” to see which use energy more effectively. Then rely on your new understanding of the energy situation as you make decisions about energy in your daily life, or participate in discussions about our nation’s energy options for the future.

The potential for brain injury on selected surfaces used by cheerleaders.

Yes I dropped the ball on this one, not paying enough attention to the goings on of the Planetary Society.  Shame on me because they ROCK!  GO SOLAR SAIL 2!!

The mark of Buzz on the Moon on July 20, 1969. Click for larger. Credit: NASA

There’s Still Time to Sign Buzz’s Birthday Card (click either of the links below)
Join Thousands to wish Apollo 11 Astronaut Buzz Aldrin Happy Birthday!

Buzz Aldrin has walked on the Moon, rapped about the Rocket Experience, and served as a tireless advocate for exploring the high frontier. Next week, the Apollo 11 astronaut turns 80 on January 20, 2010, and well-wishers worldwide can join The Planetary Society in saying Happy Birthday.

“A man and a milestone in the history of human exploration. Thank you, Buzz, for your willpower and determination… Happy Birthday!!”

To honor the man who has contributed so much to space exploration and the world, The Planetary Society is collecting birthday greetings. The Society will present a giant birthday card to Buzz, that conveys the good wishes and thanks of thousands of people, who have been inspired by his achievements and lifetime of space advocacy.
“Many have promised the Moon. You delivered it.”

To date, The Planetary Society has gathered over 6,000 messages from well-wishers in 85 countries. One parent sent a message from his sons, aged 3 and 5, named Armstrong and Aldrin. Others recounted their joy in meeting Buzz at one of his many public appearances through the years.

“Happy Birthday from an 11-year old fan! You signed my book in Pasadena, CA and I will always keep it! You are my hero!”

Many recalled the moment they watched the first humans step foot on another world.

“When I was 8, our teacher allowed us to watch the Apollo 11 moon landing on a B&W TV in the grade school cafeteria. We all clapped and shouted when the lunar module touched down. In 2010, we’re all still clapping and shouting! Happy 80th Birthday!”
But perhaps the most poignant was the simple question from a man in Indonesia:
“When will you go again?”
There is still time for people to send their birthday greetings to Buzz. Messages will be collected until Thursday, January 21, 2010.

Buzz is a hero no doubt about it!  Happy Birthday Buzz!!

The one-man stealth plane of the future is on the horizon–and it’s named after a conspicuously cute bird. NASA scientists will officially unveil their design for a hover-capable, electric-powered aircraft, nicknamed “the Puffin,” on Wednesday at an American Helicopter Society meeting in San Francisco.

On the ground, the Puffin is designed to stand on its tail, which splits into four legs to help serve as landing gear. As it prepares to take off, flaps on the wings would tilt to deflect air from the 2.3-meter-wide propeller rotors upward, keeping the plane on the ground until it was ready to fly and preventing errant gusts from tipping it over. The Puffin would rise, hover and then lean over to fly horizontally, with the pilot lying prone as if in a [hang] glider [Scientific American].

The Puffin stands 12 feet high and has a wingspan of 13.5 feet. In theory it can cruise at 150 miles per hour and sprint at more like 300 miles per hour [Gizmodo]. The craft is electrically propelled and runs on rechargeable lithium phosphate batteries, which would theoretically allow it to soar as high as 30,000 feet before its batteries would begin to run low and it would be forced to descend. But scientists are confident that the Puffin’s range could be increased as batteries improve over the coming years.

The Puffin has the potential to revolutionize the way we transport ourselves from place to place. With its small engines, light weight, and battery power, it could provide a way for us to take to the skies as the streets get more clogged with cars. And this electric aircraft also has military applications. The Puffin is 10 times quieter than current low-noise helicopters, making it suitable for covert military operations. The electric motors are not just quiet and efficient, they also generate less heat–making them less likely to show up on thermal sensors and also requiring significantly less cooling air flowing over them. This reduced aerodynamic drag gives the Puffin a speed boost that aircraft with internal combustion engines don’t get.

Researchers plan on finishing a one third-size, hover-capable Puffin demonstrator by March. But Brien Seeley, president of an independent flight test agency that hosts the annual Electric Aircraft Symposium, says the designers still have work to do. Said Seeley: “In my opinion, a mass-marketable version will need conventional seating, cup holders and a short runway for glide-in, view-ahead landings—but opening up people’s imagination is the first essential step” [Scientific American].

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Video: NASA

Manoj Nair of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has devised a new possible method of detecting a deadly tsuami long before the wave crests to dangerous heights. And, in a bit of good news, much of it is already in place.

In a new study in next month’s Earth, Planets, and Space, Nair modeled the massive 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean and found that a tsunami picking up steam as it moves across the ocean emits a tiny electromagnetic signature of of about 500 millivolts. That’s enough to have an effect on the communication cables that stretch across the ocean floor, carrying internet messages and phone calls. The electromagnetic signal “is very small compared to a 9-volt battery, but still large enough to be distinguished from background noise on a magnetically quiet day,” said Nair [Daily Camera].

Nair says this kind of system could be a lower-cost alternative to the bottom pressure arrays that directly measure large movements of water. “What we argue is that this is such a simple system to set up and start measuring,” Nair says. “We have a system of submarine cables already existing. The only thing we probably need is a voltmeter, in theory” [Wired.com].

Oleg Godin, one of Nair’s research partners, said any small improvement could make a huge difference. “If you detect tsunamis in the deep ocean — and that’s what we’re working on — meaning far from shore, you have hours, certainly tens of minutes, to warn people,” he said. “If people are well educated, a 15-minute warning is enough to save everybody” [Daily Camera].

Related Content:
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80beats: Geologists Find One Cataclysmic Tsunami in Every 600 Years of Thai Dirt
80beats: Haiti Earthquake May Have Released 250 Years of Seismic Stress

Image: flickr / epugachev

As you may know, Haiti got hit with a magnitude 6+ aftershock today, so the bad news there continues. If you want to give money to help, here are some good charities:

Non-believers Giving Aid

Doctors Without Borders

International Red Cross

International Medical Corps

I’m sure there are many more, but these are good places to give your money. We’ve seen a lot of truly awful groups using tragedies to do useless things, so please make sure the money you send goes directly to help the Haitians by assisting them with medical supplies and doctors.

When your kid isn’t in class, he/she is probably listening to an iPod, flipping TV channels, or switching between tabs on their computer, which means they may be juggling between Myspace, Facebook, and YouTube–in other words, kids today are staying hyperconnected and wired through their waking hours. That reality is confirmed by a new study done by the Kaiser Family Foundation, which reveals that if your kids are awake, they’re probably online [The New York Times].

In the third of a series of large-scale national surveys, the Kaiser Foundation study found that kids between the ages of 8-18 years now spend an average of 7 hours, 38 minutes per day using entertainment media. That adds up to more than 53 hours of entertainment consumption in a week. And this does not include the time kids spending texting or talking on their cell phones.

Unsurprisingly, the report says that all this media consumption could be a factor in kids getting lower grades or having behavioral problems. The report notes: “About half (47 percent) of heavy media users say they usually get fair or poor grades (mostly Cs or lower), compared to about a quarter (23 percent) of light users.” Heavy users are the children and teens who devour more than 16 hours of media per day, while light users are those who take in less than 3 hours per day.

The study [also] found that young people’s media consumption grew far more in the last five years than from 1999 to 2004, as sophisticated mobile technology like iPods and smart phones brought media access into teenagers’ pockets and beds [The New York Times]. Blacks and Hispanics, said the study, were the highest consumers of media. When it comes to TV watching, black children spend nearly 6 hours, Hispanics just under 5 1/2 hours, and white youths 3 1/2 hours watching TV each day. According to the report: “The racial disparity in media use has grown substantially over the past five years: for example, the gap between White and Black youth was just over two hours (2:12) in 2004, and has grown to more than four hours today (4:23).”

The report lists the top online activities as social networking, playing games, and visiting video sites such as YouTube. It also revealed that 74 percent of all 7th-12th graders say they have a profile on a social networking site. But if you are a parent, there is no need to despair; your child can still be compelled to go play outside. Kaiser executive Victoria Rideout says that rules can be a game-changer. “I don’t think parents should feel totally disempowered,” she said. “They can still make rules, and it still makes a difference” [The New York Times].

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Image Credit: iStockphoto

I like a lot of web comics, but it’s sometimes hard to find good ones. I was recently twigged on to Calamities of Nature, which commonly has themes dealing with science and critical thinking. I particularly like this one, excerpted in the picture here. The last panel is awesome.

In the character guide, the artist describes the mole (the white guy with earmuffs) as a cynic, but I don’t think so. A cynic is in many ways a pessimist, but a skeptic can see the good in things while still asking for evidence of claims. I think Aaron is a skeptic.

Tip o’ the virtual ink to Carl Spackler.

If you have a few million lying around, and you qualify, you might want to add a Space Shuttle to your collection: NASA is selling off historic artifacts, and the Orbiters are among the lots:

NASA is inviting eligible education institutions, museums and other organizations to examine and request space program artifacts online. The items represent significant human space flight technologies, processes and accomplishments from NASA’s past and present space exploration programs.

This makes perfect sense to me. The Orbiters are large, and expensive to maintain. If NASA keeps them they’d have to find a place to house them, keep them clean, and so on. That would be a huge waste of money! By selling them to a museum or some other institution NASA gets some cash, and a museum gets just about the coolest exhibit ever. I would pay an admission fee to tour through an actual Orbiter! So this is a great idea. If you qualify, go to this page and sign up.

The NASA announcement also mentions Hubble artifacts; I suspect they mean cameras and other equipment removed from the observatory when it was serviced. The Faint Object Spectrograph already sits in the National Air and Space Museum, but several others (WFPC2, GHRS, FOC, COSTAR) may be on the auction block.

I’ll note I already own a piece of Hubble: when I worked on the camera called STIS, all the team members were given a piece of mylar insulation blanket that was removed in a 1999 servicing mission as a souvenir. The snippet is encased in plastic, but it flew on Hubble for nearly ten years.

I wonder if it’s legal for NASA to sell them? That would be a nice fundraiser too.

“Be a bunny!” That was the essence of the message coming from the South Korean Department of Health this week.

Faced with an incredibly low birth rate–lower even than that of Japan–the government has now stepped in to force its employees to make more babies. They hope to do it with a flick of the switch.

The BBC reports:

At 1900 on Wednesday, officials at the Ministry of Health will turn off all the lights in the building. They want to encourage staff to go home to their families and, well, make bigger ones. They plan to repeat the experiment every month.

South Korea’s birth rate (the average number of babies born during a woman’s lifetime) is one of the world’s lowest. In 2008 the rate was 1.19, raising fears that the population will begin shrinking within a decade.

The Ministry of Health, says the BBC, is now sometimes referred to as the Ministry of Matchmaking as it arranges social gatherings to encourage people to find love and potential partners. The government also doles out gift vouchers to encourage people to have more babies–a priority for the country as its society rapidly ages and health care costs spiral upward.

As the government scrambles to get its citizens into their bedrooms, critics say unless childcare and education costs come down, young families won’t be encouraged to have babies. The naysayers argue that it will take more than just turning off the lights to get people to act like bunnies.

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Image Credit: iStockphoto

With the arrival of a certain book (selling like hotcakes on Amazon!), Sean has generously sent out thank you gifts to all deserving participants of the DonorsChoose challenge.

The final tally was 36 donors contributing $12,125, reaching a total of 3,112 students across the nation. These are incredible numbers! We can all feel proud that we have had a tangible impact on so many lives. And who knows, maybe one of the kids we have reached will now be inspired to become the next Einstein?

As promised, we’re doling out loot. 13 people gave over $100, and 4 gave over $500 (with 2 giving over $1k each!). Here is the list of recipients:
>$100: copy of Sean’s book
Raymundo in College Station, TX
James in New York, NY
Pete in St. Paul, MN
Paul in Dearborn, MI

>$500: copy of Sean’s lectures
Kitty’s Coffee in Cincinnati, OH
Sili in Odense, Denmark

There are many people that “qualified”, but haven’t sent me their addresses (of special note were Meghan in Melbourne, FL and Herbert in Bahama, NC, who were especially generous). If you would like to receive a token of our appreciation, please contact me.

Thank you again to everyone for participating!

Hey, this week’s Carnival of Space is on my friend Nicole Glarvenharbennargen’s blog One Astronomer’s Noise. At least, I think that’s how she pronounces her last name. That’s what I always hear when she says it. Anyway, she’s cool, and so is the carnival. Go read it.

We’ve brought you stories of lab-created blood cells able to simulate red blood cells in humans, or to act like platelets in rodents and stop bleeding. Now, in a study soon to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, comes a new, even smaller creation for our bloodstreams: A nanoparticle that could target and latch onto only the damaged cells in arteries around the heart to deliver drugs there.

The MIT researchers, led by Robert Langer, have developed other nanoparticles to target cancer; this new particle they call a “nanoburr,” named for those seeds covered in bristles or hooks that latch onto animals passing by. Its nanoburrs are coated with proteins which can only stick to a structure in the blood vessel wall called the “basement membrane.” This is only exposed when the wall is damaged, so only damaged sections of blood vessel are targeted [BBC News]. Then the particle can slowly release the drug stored inside.

Each particle is just 60 nanometres across – 60 billionths of a metre – and consists of three layers. The inner core contains the drug in question bound to a long-chained molecule, or polymer. A middle layer made of fatty material separates this core from the outer coating of a polymer that protects the particle as it travels in the blood stream [The Independent]. Medical researchers covet this kind of targeted drug delivery not only because it could make treatment more effective, but also because it lowers the risk of exposing other parts of the body to potentially toxic treatments.

While the nanoburrs in this case were designed to target damaged or hardened arteries and release drugs to combat atherosclerosis, Langer says the idea could be adapted to target any condition that deteriorates cell walls in a similar way, as some cancers and inflammatory diseases do. As usual, however, medical use in patients remains many years away.

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Image: MIT

The next generation of bulletproof vests and military armor could well be inspired by a deep-sea snail, say scientists.

A team led by materials scientist Christine Ortiz of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology investigated the iron-rich shell of the “scaly foot” mollusk, whose triple-layered shell gives it one of the strongest exoskeletons seen in nature. The researchers believe that copying its microstructure could help in the development of armor for soldiers, tanks, and helicopters. Their work was published (pdf) this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Scientists were first drawn to this snail in 2003 when they discovered it living in a relatively harsh environment on the floor of the Indian Ocean. It lives near hydrothermal vents that spew hot water–thereby exposing it to fluctuations in temperature as well as high acidity. It also faces attacks from predators like crabs and other snail species. But unlike other snail species, this snail survives because of its thick shell and the different properties of each of its three layers.

The outer layer of the snail’s shell is composed of iron sulphides. The scaly-foot snail is the only known animal species that uses iron sulphides as part of its structure. The middle layer is organic and much thicker than the other two. The researchers compare it to the thin protein coating, called the periostracum, seen on the shells of other snail species. The inner layer is composed of aragonite, a calcium mineral found in mollusk shells and corals [CBC]. The design of the shell apparently allows it to deflect attacks by crabs that pick up snails in their claws and squeeze them, sometimes for days at a time, in an attempt to crack their shells.

Using a device called an indenter, the researchers applied a force to the shell using a diamond tip. They discovered that the outer shell is designed to crack in a way that absorbs energy. Cracks spread only by fanning out around the iron sulphide particles. This “microcracking” not only absorbs energy, it also ensures that larger cracks do not form. What’s more, the particles of iron sulphide may blunt and deform intruding claws [The Times of India]. Meanwhile, the thick inner layer seems to absorb the mechanical energy exerted by either an indenter or a crab claw, and may also dissipate heat.

Coating armor in iron based nanoparticles that dissipate the energy of a blow by generating microcracks is “largely unexplored in synthetic systems” and particularly promising, said Ortiz. She said helmets, motorbikes, and even Arctic oil pipelines that are buffeted by icebergs could benefit from this study. Ortiz and her team are now looking at a host of natural exoskeletons to study protective design principles, including chitons, urchins, beetles, and armored fish.

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Image: Dr. Anders Warén, Swedish Museum of Natural History, Stockholm, Sweden

“The internet is not something you just dump something on. It’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes,” former Republican Senator Ted Stevens explained back in 2006.

And now, thanks to that series of tubes, you can watch a bear give birth. We don’t know what Stevens would make of this, but here comes the bear-cam.

The BBC reports that for the very first time, a webcam has been placed inside the den belonging to a pregnant wild black bear named Lily, and the “bear-cam” will stream live images to the web as she gives birth.

The bear biologist tracking Lily hopes this live birth will help people overcome their fears and misconceptions about bears. The biologist, Lynn Rogers of the Wildlife Research Institute in northern Minnesota, told the BBC:

“We’re putting it [the bear-cam] there because there is so much that we don’t know about what bears do in dens and what behavior they have leading up to giving birth. And how they take care of the cubs.”

Lily is three years old, and viewers who see the live birth may see the arrival of three cubs–that’s the size of a regular bear litter. This may all seem like quite an invasion of privacy, however Lily is no stranger to the Internet. She’s already a bit of a star on Facebook. Her “Lily The Black Bear” fan page has garnered more than 30,000 fans. She also has her own Twitter account.

So go forth, dear reader, and “friend” the bear. And don’t forget to tune in to the live birth–when the cubs will greet their momma and the entire world all at once.

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Image Credit: Wikipedia Commons

It’s easy to think of Jupiter when we see storms like the one I have here, but Saturn also has such storms.

A storm on Saturn. Click for a little larger version. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

This image is black and white, had it been in color the colors would be muted in comparison to Jupiter owing to the fact that Saturn is farther from the sun and the bands are less chemically complex.

Still Saturn has belts and zones just like Jupiter and don’t be fooled the winds of the upper atmosphere are fast, very fast at around 1,800 km/hr…that’s 1,100 + miles per hour! We don’t see as many really big cyclonic storms on Saturn and they don’t live as long.

Just like Jupiter, the gravitational contraction heats up the interior of the planet and helps power the storms. Yeah, real pressure, in the order of 4-million atmospheres, and the pressure is so intense the interior is thought to be liquid hydrogen with a core of rock and ice about 1.5 times the size of our Earth.

Next time you see a picture of Saturn and Jupiter side by side, notice that Saturn is flattened more at the poles, this is because of the low density of the planet and the rapid rotation. Oh sure, Jupiter also shows flattening, but not so much.

And yes Saturn would float in water because its density is 0.7 g/cc and water is generally regarded to be 1.0 g/cc.

About the image from the Cassini site:

This view looks toward a region centered at 24 degrees south of the planet’s equator.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Nov. 6, 2009 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 2.1 million kilometers (1.3 million miles) from Saturn. Image scale is 12 kilometers (7 miles) per pixel.