Not long ago, I was talking with one of our local kids about the robotic probes that captured the wonderful images like these. She had never known a time when high quality imagery of objects in space was unavailable. Somewhere during the conversation, it dawned on her that the robotic probes were a relatively recent invention, and she asked me how we got images “before”. When I told her that we simply didn't have them – that, for example, we knew Saturn as a fuzzy blob with fuzzy rings and very little detail – she thought I was pulling her leg. Yet I can easily remember the wonder of those first probes – Ranger, Mariner, Venera – returning grainy images that were miraculously better than what could be obtained from earth. I can also remember the amazing advances in adaptive optics making leaps and bounds in improving earth-bound astrophotography. It wasn't so very long ago, really, that images like the one above could be found only in science fiction illustrations made by painters with vivid imaginations. Now they're routine, and rather taken for granted...
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