Category: Saturn

Cassini took this photograph of the 245-km (150-mile) crater Melanthius on the surface of Saturn’s moon Tethys. The central mountains at the heart of Melanthius are left over from when the crater first formed millions of years ago. Cassini took the photo on July 23, 2006 when it was 120,000 kilometers (75,000 miles) from Tethys.
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This is a view looking down onto the unlit side of Saturn’s rings, lit only by the reflected light from the planet. There are also two small moons in the image: Atlas and Pandora. Cassini took this photo on July 25, 2006 when it was approximately 1 million kilometers (600,000 miles) from Saturn.
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This photograph is a close-up view of Saturn’s A ring taken by Cassini. Look closely and you’ll see that the dark regions appear to widen and then narrow, and the thin bright regions disappear altogether. Cassini took this image on July 23, 2006 when it was 285,000 kilometers (177,000 miles) from Saturn.
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NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured this image of the star Rigel passing behind Saturn’s atmosphere. Rigel is well known to astronomers, as one of the brightest stars in the constellation of Orion. This event allows Cassini to measure the haze structure and opacity of Saturn’s upper atmosphere as the star is dimmed. Cassini took this image on June 30, 2004 when it was 446,000 kilometers (277,000 miles) from Saturn.
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NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured this photograph of Saturn’s moon Rhea emerging from behind another of its moons, Enceladus. At 1,528 km (949 miles) across, Rhea is actually three times larger than Enceladus (505 km or 314 miles), but Cassini was much closer to Enceladus when it captured this occultation event on July 4, 2006.
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This view of Saturn’s moon Hyperion has been given false colour enhancements to highlight its geologic features. Photographs in ultraviolet, green, and infrared were combined together on computer, and then superimposed over a clear-filter image to preserve brightness. Scientists don’t fully understand why Hyperion has the variations, but it could be due to the size of the ice grains on its surface.
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Nope, that’s not an error in the photograph. The ghostly white stripe in Saturn’s rings was captured by Cassini on July 23, 2006. This is the first time that Cassini has seen spokes in Saturn’s rings in nearly a year, and the first time from the sunlit side of the rings. Some scientists think the spokes might be caused by meteoroid impacts onto the rings. Others suggest they’re created by an instability in Saturn’s magnetic field.
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New research from NASA, published in the journal Nature suggests that it’s always raining on Titan. Not thunderstorms, but a low level liquid methane drizzle that never stops. When Huygens landed onto the surface of Titan, it came down with a splat, presumably into mud. Scientists estimate that the amount of rain amounts to about 5 cm (2 inches) a year of accumulation – the same amount that falls in Death Valley on Earth. But this rain falls steadily, keeping the ground relatively damp.
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When ESA’s Huygens probe landed on the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan last year, it continued to transmit data for 71 minutes. The signal relayed through Cassini had a strange fluctuation in power as the angle between the lander and spacecraft changed. Researchers were able to reproduce this power oscillation when they realized that the signal was bouncing off of pebbles on Titan’s surface. They were able calculate that the surface around Huygens is mostly flat, but littered with 5-10 cm (2-4 inch) rocks.
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New radar images of Titan show surprisingly familiar terrain on Saturn’s largest moon. The radar images show a strip 4,500 km (2,796 miles) long, straight through the Xanadu region. Some images show hills, valleys and dark sand dunes cut by river networks – the similarity to Earth is striking. Of course, Titan is so cold it can’t be water; these rivers are probably formed by liquid methane or ethane. Cassini will return to Titan on Saturday, July 22 and capture images of the northern latitudes.
Continue reading “Earthlike Regions on Titan”