Tag Archive for 'Saturn'

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

New Science Results from Cassini’s Grand Finale

Oct 11, 2018 by News Staff

Cassini’s 20-year mission culminated in a series of wild orbits. First, it grazed the outer rim of Saturn’s rings and then, in the Grand Finale phase,...

An artist’s concept of a dust storm on Titan. Image credit: NASA / ESA / IPGP / Labex UnivEarthS / University Paris Diderot.

Cassini Scientists Spot Dust Storms on Saturn’s Moon Titan

Sep 25, 2018 by News Staff

Researchers using data from NASA’s Cassini orbiter have found evidence for massive dust storms in Titan’s equatorial regions. The discovery, reported...

Huge Northern Polar Vortex Spotted Forming in Saturn’s Stratosphere

Sep 5, 2018 by News Staff

When NASA’s Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn in 2004, the gas giant’s southern hemisphere was enjoying summertime, while the northern was in the...

This Hubble image is a composite of observations made of Saturn in early 2018 in the optical and of the auroras on Saturn’s north pole region, made in 2017. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / A. Simon, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / OPAL Team / J. DePasquale, STScI / L. Lamy, Observatoire de Paris.

Hubble Captures Enormous Northern Auroras on Saturn

Aug 31, 2018 by News Staff

Viewing Saturn’s northern polar region for a period of seven months, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space telescope snapped a series of stunning images of auroras...

This image shows the recent observations of the planets Mars and Saturn made with Hubble. Image credit: NASA / ESA / A. Simon, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center / OPAL Team / J. DePasquale, STScI.

Mars and Saturn Photographed Near Opposition

Jul 27, 2018 by News Staff

In summer 2018 Mars and Saturn are, one after the other, in opposition to Earth. Around the time of opposition, a planet is at its closest distance to...

These images of Titan were created using 13 years of data acquired by Cassini’s VIMS instrument. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / University of Nantes / University of Arizona.

NASA Releases Spectacular New Infrared Images of Titan

Jul 20, 2018 by News Staff

The newly-released series of images, made from data obtained by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) instrument on board NASA’s Cassini...

Sulaiman et al found a powerful interaction of plasma waves moving from Saturn to its rings and Enceladus. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

Sounds of Saturn: Evidence of Communication between Saturn, Its Rings and Enceladus via Plasma Waves

Jul 10, 2018 by News Staff

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft’s high-inclination Grand Finale orbits offered an unprecedented new view of Saturn and its environment. New research from...

This artist’s painting of the south polar region of Enceladus shows massive jets of water ice being blasted into space. Image credit: Karl Kofoed / NASA.

Cassini Scientists Find Complex Organic Molecules in Geyser-Like Plumes of Enceladus

Jun 28, 2018 by News Staff

Using data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, a research team led by University of Heidelberg scientists Frank Postberg and Nozair Khawaja found that complex,...

A C(60) molecule is included in a disk-shaped anthracene macrocycle. The formation of a Saturn-type complex is facilitated by the shape-size fit and the multipoint CH***pi-contacts. Image credit: Yamamoto et al, doi: 10.1002/anie.201804430.

Chemists Synthesize Molecular ‘Nano-Saturn’

Jun 13, 2018 by News Staff

A team of chemists from the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the Okayama University of Science, Japan, has synthesized a ‘nano-Saturn,’ a molecular...

This image of Phobos was acquired using the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) during Mars Express orbit 17,342 on September 12, 2017. Image credit: ESA / DLR / FU Berlin / CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO.

ESA’s Mars Express Spacecraft Observes Phobos and Deimos

Mar 13, 2018 by News Staff

New images and video captured by ESA’s Mars Express orbiter show two small Martian moons Phobos and Deimos drifting in front of the giant planet Saturn...

Top: stereographic polar projections of Titan’s topography with the South Pole left and the North Pole right; Ontario Lacus and the each of the large northern seas are found in local depressions. Bottom: equicylindrical projection of Titan’s topography. All maps have been corrected for the geoid. Image credit: Corlies et al, doi: 10.1002/2017GL075518.

Planetary Researchers Create New Global Topographic Map of Saturn’s Moon Titan

Jan 19, 2018 by News Staff

Using data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, a team of planetary researchers led by Cornell University has produced a new global topographic map of Titan,...

Saturn’s Great Northern Storm churning through the atmosphere in the planet’s northern hemisphere overtakes itself as it encircles the planet in this true-color view from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. This picture, captured on February 25, 2011, was taken about 12 weeks after the storm began, and the clouds by this time had formed a tail that wrapped around the gas giant. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

Saturn’s Northern Storms Cause Disturbances in Its ‘Heartbeat’

Dec 31, 2017 by News Staff

Giant storms in Saturn’s northern hemisphere can disturb atmospheric patterns at the ringed giant’s equator, according to new research published in...

Dragonfly is a dual-quadcopter lander that would take advantage of the environment on Saturn’s hazy moon Titan to fly to multiple locations, some hundreds of miles apart, to sample materials and determine surface composition to investigate Titan’s organic chemistry and habitability, monitor atmospheric and surface conditions, image landforms to investigate geological processes, and perform seismic studies. Image credit: NASA.

NASA Announces Finalists for Future Solar System Mission

Dec 21, 2017 by News Staff

NASA has selected two finalist concepts for a robotic mission planned to launch in the mid-2020s: a comet sample return mission and a drone-like rotorcraft...

Titan’s south polar vortex stands out against the orange and blue haze layers that are characteristic of the hazy moon’s atmosphere. This view looks towards the trailing hemisphere of Titan (3,200 miles, or 5,150 km across). North on Titan is up and rotated 17 degrees to the left. Images taken using red, green and blue spectral filters were combined to create this natural-color view. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on July 30, 2013. The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 895,000 miles (1.441 million km) from Titan. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

New Study Explains Unexpected Cooling of Titan’s Polar Atmosphere

Nov 24, 2017 by News Staff

A study published in the journal Nature Communications has shown that a recently reported unexpected polar vortex behavior on Saturn’s hazy moon Titan...

This image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows Saturn and its rings. Six of Saturn’s moons make a faint appearance in this image: the ice-covered moon Enceladus can be seen at the 1 o’clock position; directly below Enceladus, just outside the F ring (the thin, farthest ring from the planet seen in this image) lies the small moon Epimetheus; following the F ring clock-wise from Epimetheus, the next moon seen is Janus; at about the 4:30 position and outward from the F ring is Mimas; inward of Mimas and still at about the 4:30 position is the F-ring-disrupting moon, Pandora; moving around to the 10 o’clock position, just inside of the F ring, is the moon Prometheus. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

NASA’s Cassini Team Releases Stunning Natural-Color Image of Saturn

Nov 23, 2017 by News Staff

After more than 13 years at Saturn, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft bid farewell to the Saturnian system by firing the shutters of its wide-angle camera and...

This graphic illustrates how water might be heated inside Enceladus. Over time, cool ocean water seeps into the moon’s porous core. Pockets of water reaching deep into the interior are warmed by contact with rock in the tidally heated interior and subsequently rise owing to the positive buoyancy, leading to further interaction with the rocks. The heat deposited at the boundary between the seafloor and ocean powers hydrothermal vents. Heat and rocky particles are transported through the ocean, triggering localized melting in the icy shell above. This leads to the formation of fissures, from which jets of water vapor and the rocky particles from the seafloor are ejected into space. In the graphic, the interior ‘slice’ is an excerpt from a new model that simulated this process. The orange glow represents the parts of the core where temperatures reach at least 194 degrees Fahrenheit. Tidal heating owing to the friction arising between particles in the porous core provides a key source of energy, but is not illustrated in this graphic. The tidal heating results primarily from the gravitational pull from Saturn. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute / LPG-CNRS / University of Nantes / University of Angers / ESA.

Enceladus’ Highly Porous Core Keeps Its Subsurface Ocean Warm, New Study Says

Nov 8, 2017 by News Staff

A new modeling study led by the University of Nantes is the first to explain several key characteristics of Saturn’s moon Enceladus observed by NASA’s...

Saturn Moons Stained by Enceladus’ ‘Ingredients for Life’

Oct 25, 2017 by James Romero

Weathered organic material once dissolved in Enceladus’ subsurface ocean is coating Saturn’s inner moons, explaining surprising variations in their...

This view of Titan is among the last images NASA’s Cassini spacecraft sent to Earth before it plunged into the giant planet’s atmosphere. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute.

Toxic Ice Cloud Found in Titan’s Stratosphere

Oct 19, 2017 by News Staff

Planetary researchers with NASA’s Cassini mission have detected a cloud of toxic hybrid ice high above the south pole of Saturn’s hazy moon, Titan. This...

In this screenshot from the short animated film Cassini’s Grand Finale, the spacecraft is shown breaking apart after entering the atmosphere of Saturn. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech.

NASA Researchers Reconstruct Cassini’s Dive into Saturn’s Atmosphere

Oct 15, 2017 by News Staff

Analysis of science data from Cassini’s final plunge is ongoing, but NASA researchers already have a clear understanding of how the spacecraft behaved...

It’s raining on Titan. Image credit: David A. Hardy, AstroArt / NASA.

Heavy Methane Rainstorms Batter Titan, Researchers Say

Oct 13, 2017 by News Staff

Saturn’s hazy moon has surprisingly extreme rainstorms, according to new research published in the journal Nature Geoscience. It’s raining on Titan....

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