Oh Frabjous Day!

As Cassini wends its way in and around the Saturnian system, scientists around the world have gazed in awe at the images sent back.

This is Dione, one of the more well-known satellites of Saturn. The probe's closest approach was 500km, at 1820 GMT on October 11th. This was taken from about a million km away. We have an artist working on a better painting, but we don't hold out much hope.

Our previous photographs of this distant moon were blurry at best, but the quality of these is as if we are actually there.

It takes over four hours for these images to reach Earth.

Although I am a nuclear scientist, my research leads me to digressions in other fields, one of them astronomy.

As we usher in the year 2006, one has to wonder what prospects science will offer us, given that we have come this far.