Lakes on Titan May Have Actually Unique Crystals Encrusted Around Their...
Titan is a mysterious, strange place for human eyes. It’s a frigid world, with seas of liquid hydrocarbons, and a structure made up of layers of water, different kinds of ice, and a core of hydrous silicates. It may even have cryovolcanoes. Adding to the odd nature of Saturn’s largest moon is the presence of…
Sensational Image Demonstrates how Saturn’s Tiny Moon Shapes the World’s Rings
The Cassini mission to Saturn ended a year and a half ago, but scientific results are still coming from all of the data it collected. When Cassini moved in closer to Saturn in its final months, it took a very detailed look at the gas giant’s rings, travelling between them and the planet itself. That…
Weekly Area Hangout: Feb 13, 2019– Luciano Iess of the Cassini...
Hosts:Fraser Cain (universetoday.com / @fcain)Dr. Paul M. Sutter (pmsutter.com / @PaulMattSutter)Dr. Kimberly Cartier (KimberlyCartier.org / @AstroKimCartier )Dr. Morgan Rehnberg (MorganRehnberg.com / @MorganRehnberg & ChartYourWorld.org) Luciano Iess, professor of Aerospace Engineering at Sapienza University of Rome, is a member of the Cassini radio science team that recently determined, after analyzing gravity science data collected during the…
Saturn’s Rings are Just 10 to 100 Million Years Of Ages
Can you imagine the Solar System without Saturn’s rings? Can you envision Earth at the time the dinosaurs roamed the planet? According to a new paper, the two may have coincided. Data from the Cassini mission shows that Saturn’s rings may be only 10 to 100 million years old. They may not have been there…
Cassini Saw Rain Falling at Titan’s North Pole
The Cassini mission to Saturn ended in September 2017, but the data it gathered during its 13 year mission is still yielding scientific results. On the heels of a newly-released global image of Saturn’s moon Titan comes another discovery: Rainfall at Titan’s north pole. Climate models developed by scientists during Cassini’s mission concluded that rain…
Titan’s Thick Clouds Obscure our View, however Cassini Took these Images...
Saturn’s moon Titan is a very strange place. It’s surrounded by a dense, opaque atmosphere, the only moon in the solar system with an atmosphere to speak of. It has lakes of liquid methane on its surface, maybe some cryovolcanoes, and some scientists speculate that it could support a form of life. Very weird life.…
Saturn is Losing its Rings, Quick. They Might be Gone Within...
It has been almost forty years since the Voyager 1 and 2 missions visited the Saturn system. As the probes flew by the gas giant, they were able to capture some stunning, high-resolution images of the planet’s atmosphere, its many moons, and its iconic ring system. In addition, the probes also revealed that Saturn was…
Being Cassini. Experience What It Resembled to Fly Past Jupiter and...
What would it be like to be onboard the Cassini orbiter as it made its way around Jupiter and Saturn and their moons? Pretty cool. Now a new video made from Cassini images pieces together parts of that stately journey. Kevin M. Gill, software and self-described data wrangler at NASA-JPL, put together a video that…
Titan First-Ever Detected Dust Storms Proves the Moon to be More...
Ever since the Cassini orbiter entered the Saturn system in July of 2004, scientists and the general public have been treated to a steady stream of data about this ringed giant and its many fascinating moons. In particular, a great deal of attention was focused on Saturn’s largest moon Titan, which has many surprising Earth-like…
