By now you probably know about the lakes of liquid hydrocarbons on Titan. Thanks to Cassini, we know that Saturn’s largest moon is the one other place in the solar system where liquid can be found in stable amounts on the surface, except that it’s not water like we have here on Earth, but rather…
Tag: Saturn
Cassini’s Best Look Yet At Saturn’s Crazy Hexagon
Yes, I said hexagon. If you haven’t heard, our solar system’s second-largest planet has another curious feature besides its sprawling rings; it’s also in possession of an uncannily geometric six-sided jet stream encircling its north pole — at the heart of which lies a churning hurricane-like vortex over 1,800 miles wide. This hexagon has been…
Watch this beautiful new trailer for “In Saturn’s Rings”
It’s a labor of love: using hundreds of thousands of real images taken by NASA’s Cassini, Galileo, Voyager, and other space exploration missions to create a stunning feature-length, high-definition IMAX movie that showcases the beauty of our Solar System on the big screen like never before. This is the achievement of “In Saturn’s Rings,” a…
OMG Saturn.
Go get some extra socks handy because this new image of Saturn is going to knock ’em clean off your feet. Seen in eclipse against the light of the Sun, Saturn and its rings seem to glow with a magical light in this picture, painstakingly assembled from 141 separate wide-angle images taken by the Cassini spacecraft…
Cassini Gets Its Best Look Ever at Titan’s Polar Lakes
A combination of exceptionally clear weather, the steady approach of northern summer, and a poleward orbital path has given Cassini — and Cassini scientists — unprecedented views of countless lakes scattered across Titan’s north polar region. In the near-infrared mosaic above they can be seen as dark splotches and speckles scattered around the moon’s north…
You Could Never See Saturn Like This
…not without a spaceship, anyway. But Cassini can — and did — on October 10, 2013 (mostly because it IS a spaceship) and thanks to the image-editing skills of Gordan Ugarkovic you too can enjoy the incredible view!
Saturn’s Atmosphere is More Varied Than it Looks, With Tropical “Jungles” and Ammonia “Deserts”
Saturn might look like a placid beige ball in backyard telescopes but in reality it has very dynamic weather patterns and climates, rivaling the storms of Jupiter and the varied climates of Earth, based on long-term microwave observations by the Cassini spacecraft. (Yes, microwaves are good for much more than heating up your coffee.)
A Cosmic Quotation Mark? No, It’s Just Another Moon of Saturn
What looks like a single open-quote (or backwards comma) is really Saturn’s two-toned moon Iapetus, seen here in RGB composite color made from raw images acquired by Cassini on Aug. 30 from a distance of about 1.5 million miles. With a leading side stained a dark reddish hue and a trailing side bright white, the…
This is the World Waving at Saturn
On July 19 did you wave at Saturn as Cassini was aiming its camera back our way? If you did (and if you sent a photo of you waving to JPL, like I did) you’re in this awesome new image, a compilation of 1400 submitted photos from assembled into a mosaic of Earth, a planet-wide…
Saturn and Titan Together
Here’s a particularly nice view of Saturn backlit by the Sun, captured by Cassini while on the ringed planet’s night side on August 12, 2013. Titan is visible at the upper right, its thick atmosphere scattering sunlight into a nearly-complete ring around it. The color-composite above was assembled from raw images captured in red, green,…
Incredible Images of Earth from Saturn and Mercury
What does the Earth and Moon look like from other planets in the solar system? Just more pretty little lights in the dark…
Cassini Snaps a Picture of Earth from 900 Million Miles Away
So did you get out and Wave at Saturn on The Day the Earth Smiled? If you did (and even if you didn’t) here’s how you — and everyone else on Earth — looked to the Cassini spacecraft in orbit around Saturn, 898.4 million miles away.* As Carl Sagan famously said, “That’s here, that’s home,…
Lights in the Dark 