🦞🌯 Lobster Roll

New mapping of the giant planet’s upper atmosphere reveals likely reason why it’s so hot. The upper layers in the atmospheres of gas giants — Saturn, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune — are hot, just like Earth’s. But unlike Earth, the Sun is too far from these outer planets to account ...

Titan, with its methane seas and orange smog, is in some ways the most similar world to Earth that we have found. Though it’s merely a moon tethered by gravity to its cosmic ruler, Saturn, Titan has all the trappings of a planet, including clouds, rain, lakes and rivers, and even a subsurface ocean ...

High-resolution images obtained by the Cassini spacecraft were used for this purpose by the Planetary Science Group at the University of the Basque Country. A rich variety of meteorological phenomena take place in the extensive hydrogen atmosphere of the planet Saturn, a world about ten times the si...

The new research by scientists at NASA and the Italian Space Agency has implications for the entire Saturn system as well as other planets and moons. Just as our own Moon floats away from Earth a tiny bit more each year, other moons are doing the same with their host planets. As a moon orbits, [...]

Saturn is truly the lord of the rings in this latest snapshot from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, taken on July 4, 2020, when the opulent giant world was 839 million miles from Earth. This new Saturn image was taken during summer in the planet’s northern hemisphere. Hubble found a number...

Scientists used data gathered by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft during 13 years of exploring the Saturn system to make detailed images of the icy moon — and to reveal geologic activity. New composite images made from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft are the most detailed global infrared views ever p...

A global infrared mosaic of Saturn’s moon Enceladus created using a complete dataset from the Cassini spacecraft has revealed new detail on the moon’s surface. Cassini orbited Saturn and its moons from 2004 to 2017. The mission ended when the spacecraft was intentionally plunged into the planet’s at...

Dragonfly is a NASA mission that delivers a rotorcraft to Saturn’s moon Titan to advance our search for the building blocks of life. While Dragonfly was originally scheduled to launch in 2026, NASA has requested the Dragonfly team pursue their alternative launch readiness date in 2027. No changes wi...

A new 3D model could explain the formation of a hexagon storm on Saturn. With its dazzling system of icy rings, Saturn has been a subject of fascination since ancient times. Even now the sixth planet from the sun holds many mysteries, partly because its distance away makes direct observation difficu...

Catherine Neish is counting the days until her space launch. While the Western planetary geologist isn’t space-suiting up for her own interstellar voyage, she is playing a key role in an international mission – dispatching a robotic drone to Saturn’s moon Titan – set to blast off in 2027. For nearly...

Where were Jupiter and Saturn born? New work led by Carnegie’s Matt Clement reveals the likely original locations of Saturn and Jupiter. These findings refine our understanding of the forces that determined our Solar System’s unusual architecture, including the ejection of an additional ...

New research on nine craters of Saturn’s largest moon provides more details about how weathering affects the evolution of the surface — and what lies beneath. Scientists have used data from NASA’s Cassini mission to delve into the impact craters on the surface of Titan, revealing more de...

A new chronology for the moons of Saturn has been developed by Planetary Science Institute Associate Research Scientist Samuel W. Bell.  “Most studies dating surfaces on the Moon or Mars rely on counting how many impact craters have formed and knowing the cratering rate, but on the moons of Sat...

Just after sunset on the evening of December 21, 2020, Jupiter and Saturn will appear closer together in Earth’s night sky than they have been since the Middle Ages, offering people the world over a celestial treat to ring in the winter solstice. “Alignments between these two planets are rather rare...

Models Point to a Potentially Diverse Metabolic Menu at Enceladus Using data from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, scientists at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) modeled chemical processes in the subsurface ocean of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. The studies indicate the possibility that a varied...

Skywatchers are in for an end-of-year treat. What has become known popularly as the “Christmas Star” is an especially vibrant planetary conjunction easily visible in the evening sky as the bright planets Jupiter and Saturn come together, culminating on the night of December 21. In 1610, Italian astr...

Titan’s Kraken Mare: A Methane Sea of Mystery Far below the gaseous atmospheric shroud on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, lies Kraken Mare, a sea of liquid methane. Cornell astronomers have estimated that the sea to be at least 1,000 feet (300 meters) deep near its center – enough room for a potential...

Saturn’s Moons, Led by Titan, Are Slowly Tilting the Planet Two scientists from CNRS and Sorbonne University working at the Institute of Celestial Mechanics and Ephemeris Calculation (Paris Observatory – PSL/CNRS) have just shown that the influence of Saturn’s satellites can explain the ...

Study shows many kinds of finance-sector failures — not just history’s most famous bank runs — lead to economic downturns. A banking crisis is often seen as a self-fulfilling prophecy: The expectation of bank failure makes it happen. Picture people lining up to withdraw their money during the Great ...

What’s Up for March? Mars and friends in the evening, and a brilliant pair of planets returns… In the first week or so of March, you’ll find Mars near the Pleiades star cluster high in the west in the few hours after sunset. NASA’s Perseverance rover successfully landed on Ma...

Hubble has revealed seasonal changes in Saturn’s atmosphere, including brighter equatorial regions and shifting wind speeds. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope is giving astronomers a view of changes in Saturn’s vast and turbulent atmosphere as the planet’s northern hemisphere summer transitions to fall ...

Cassini’s 2009 equinox image revealed Saturn’s rings casting a thin shadow, a cosmic moment captured like never before. Spring doesn’t just happen on Earth. Spring also happens on some of our neighboring planets in the solar system. Of the countless equinoxes Saturn has seen since the birth of...

Enceladus’s hidden ocean may have Earth-like currents driven by salinity differences. Buried beneath 20 kilometers (12 miles) of ice, the subsurface ocean of Enceladus—one of Saturn’s moons—appears to be churning with currents akin to those on Earth. The theory, derived from the shape of Encel...

Researchers simulate conditions necessary for planet’s unique magnetic field. New Johns Hopkins University simulations offer an intriguing look into Saturn’s interior, suggesting that a thick layer of helium rain influences the planet’s magnetic field. The models, published recently in AGU Advances,...

Researchers recreated planetary conditions in the lab and detected helium separating from hydrogen, confirming helium rain occurs in gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn. Nearly 40 years ago, scientists first predicted the existence of helium rain inside planets composed primarily of hydrogen and heli...