Water vapour is delivered to Saturn’s stratosphere by Enceladus’ plumes and subsequent diffusion in the planet system. It is expected to condense into a haze in the middle stratosphere.
Saturn
Posted inBiosignatures & Paleobiology, Enceladus, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Missions & Hardware, Reports, Roadmaps, & Plans, Robotics/Rovers/UAVs, Saturn, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Enceladus Orbilander Flagship Mission
The second-highest priority new Flagship mission in Origins, Worlds, and Life: A Decadal Strategy for Planetary Science and Astrobiology 2023-2032 is the Enceladus Orbilander [1].
Posted inAstrogeology, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Cryobiology, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Missions & Hardware, Press Release, Robotics/Rovers/UAVs, Saturn, Titan, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Titan Could Harbor Life, But Only A Tiny Amount, Study Finds
Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, is a strange, alien world. Covered in rivers and lakes of liquid methane, icy boulders and dunes of soot-like “sand,” its topography has long fascinated scientists […]
Posted inAstrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Cryobiology, Icy Worlds, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Missions & Hardware, Press Release, Robotics/Rovers/UAVs, Saturn, Titan, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
The Top 10 Huygens Discoveries At Titan
On 14 January 2005, at 13:34 CET (12:34 UTC), ESA’s Huygens probe entered the history books by descending to the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.
Posted inEnceladus, Icy Worlds, Saturn, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Enceladus’s Limit Cycle
Enceladus exhibits some remarkable phenomena, including water geysers spraying through surface cracks, a global ice shell that is librating atop an ocean, a large luminosity, and rapid outward orbital migration.
Posted inIcy Worlds, Saturn, Status Report
Understanding the Formation of Saturn’s Regular Moons in the Context of Giant Planet Moons Formation Scenarios
This article explores the different formation scenarios of the Kronian moons system in the context of a highly dissipative Saturn, with the objective of identifying the most likely of these […]
Posted inAstrochemistry, Astrogeology, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Comets and Asteroids, Enceladus, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Missions & Hardware, Saturn, Status Report
Peculiar Rainbows in Saturn’s E Ring: Uncovering Luminious Bands Near Enceladus
We report observations of stripe-like features in Enceladus’ plumes captured simultaneously by Cassini’s VIMS-IR and ISS NAC instruments during flyby E17, with similar patterns seen in VIMS-IR data from flyby […]
Posted inAstrogeology, Enceladus, Icy Worlds, Saturn, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Enceladus’s Tidal Heating
Saturn raises a time-dependent tide on its small moon Enceladus, due to the eccentricity of the orbit. As shown in a companion paper (Goldreich et al.), the resulting tidal heating […]
Posted inAstrogeology, Icy Worlds, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Press Release, Saturn, Titan, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography
Tidal Energy Measurements Help Understand Titan’s Composition And Orbital History
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) scientists are studying Saturn’s moon Titan to assess its tidal dissipation rate, the energy lost as it orbits the ringed planet with its massive gravitational force. […]
Posted inAstrochemistry, Astrogeology, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Cryobiology, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Missions & Hardware, Saturn, Status Report, Titan
Titan’s Fluvial and Lacustrine Landscapes
In this chapter we begin with a review of Titan’s fluvial and lacustrine landscapes as observed with Cassini remote sensing data, and what the many discoveries have revealed about Titan’s […]