Cassini Archives

Enceladus orbiting within Saturn's E ring Credits: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute larger image

Astrogeology, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Enceladus, Icy Worlds, Saturn, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Icy Ocean World Enceladus Orbits In The Ring It Makes Around Saturn

by Keith CowingOctober 6, 2025

Saturn’s E ring is a huge, fuzzy, donut-shaped circle of particles around Saturn, that puzzled scientists for a long time.

The inside of Enceladus larger image -- ESA

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biophysics, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Enceladus, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Missions & Hardware, Press Release, Saturn, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Cassini Proves The Existence Of Complex Chemistry Within Enceladus’ Ocean

by Keith CowingOctober 1, 2025October 1, 2025

Scientists digging through data collected by the Cassini spacecraft have found new complex organic molecules spewing from Saturn’s moon Enceladus. This is a clear sign that complex chemical reactions are […]

An artist’s impression of plumes erupting onto the surface of Enceladus. Its fellow moon Titan is seen in the sky, and the distant Sun beyond. Credit ESA/Science Office. Larger image

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Enceladus, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Press Release, Saturn

Study Questions Oceanic Origin Of Organics In Enceladus’s Plumes

by Keith CowingSeptember 9, 2025September 9, 2025

Organic molecules detected in the watery plumes that spew out from cracks in the surface of Enceladus could be formed through exposure to radiation on Saturn’s icy moon, rather than […]

The proposed mechanism for vesicle formation on Titan. (1) Methane lakes and seas on Titan’s surface become coated with a film of amphiphiles. (2) Methane raindrops splash the lake surface. (3) Splashes create a mist of droplets coated in the same film. (4) Droplets settle back onto the lake and sink, becoming coated in a bilayer which becomes a vesicle. Christian Mayer (Universität Duisburg-Essen) and Conor Nixon (NASA Goddard)

Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biophysics, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Genomics, Proteomics, Bioinformatics, Origin & Evolution of Life, Press Release, Titan

NASA Research Shows Path Toward Protocells on Titan

by Keith CowingJuly 30, 2025July 30, 2025

NASA research has shown that cell-like compartments called vesicles could form naturally in the lakes of Saturn’s moon Titan.

Major steps in the disk detection process on two cubes: (far left) an unaltered cube; (center left) edge pixels identified using Canny edge detection – some pixels along terrain boundaries are falsely identified as edge pixels; (center right) the accumulator array after applying a circle Hough transform; (far right) the final array, containing only data from the disk of Titan. Data were taken at 2 µm. -- astro-ph.EP

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Missions & Hardware, Status Report, Titan

Extreme Forward Scattering Observed in Disk-Averaged Near-Infrared Phase Curves of Titan

by Keith CowingJuly 3, 2025July 4, 2025

Titan, with its thick and hazy atmosphere, is a key world in our solar system for understanding light scattering processes.

A family portrait of hydrocarbons in Titan’s transmission spectrum obtained with Cassini/VIMS. Best fit model (thick blue line) to Titan’s spectrum obtained during visit T10 (see Table 1) from Robinson et al. (2014), together with the individual contribution of different absorption molecules (see legend) included in the present retrieval (here, case 25, see Table 3). The best-fit residuals are reported as a function of scaled error together with their distribution in the bottom panels. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Missions & Hardware, Status Report, Titan

The Detection-vs-Retrieval Challenge: Titan As An Exoplanet

by Keith CowingJune 19, 2025June 19, 2025

Cassini’s observations of Titan’s atmosphere are exemplary benchmarks for exoplanet atmospheric studies owing to (1) their precision and (2) our independent knowledge of Titan.

Retrievals of Cassini/VIMS occultation of Titan. Top left: observations and best-fit TauREx retrievals. Bottom left: breakdown of the extinction contributions in the tholin + CH4(l)(HITRAN) case. Right: Atmospheric properties inferred for the tholin + CH4(l) (HITRAN) case. The source for the opacity data (i.e, HITRAN or ExoMol) is important and can slightly change the best-fit spectrum and retrieval interpretation. Overall, the Cassini data is dominated by molecular absorption from CH4, CO, C2H6, C3H8 and extinction by hydrocarbon aerosols (tholins + CHCH4(l). The shape of the 3.4 µm absorption feature is likely best explained by the contribution of multiple species including some contribution from tholins. Overall, retrieval interpretations of Titan’s atmosphere are compatible with stratospheric inferences from previous works (see Figure B1). -- astro-ph.EP

Astronomy & Telescopes, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Biosignatures & Paleobiology, Exoplanets, -moons, -comets, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Status Report, Titan

Cloud and Haze Parameterization in Atmospheric Retrievals: Insights from Titan’s Cassini Data and JWST Observations of Hot Jupiters

by Keith CowingMay 27, 2025May 27, 2025

Context: Before JWST, telescope observations were not sensitive enough to constrain the nature of clouds in exo-atmospheres. Recent observations, however, have inferred cloud signatures as well as haze-enhanced scattering slopes […]

Images from the Cassini mission show river networks draining into lakes in Titan’s north polar region. Credits:Image: NASA/JPL/USGS

Analog Studies, Arctic / Antarctic / Alpine, Astrogeology, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Cryobiology, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Missions & Hardware, Press Release, Robotics/Rovers/UAVs, Titan

The Mystery Of Titan’s Missing Deltas

by Keith CowingApril 19, 2025April 19, 2025

For scientists who want to learn about the geological history of a planet, river deltas are a great place to start. Deltas gather sediment from a large area into one […]

Huygens landing - still from animation: ESA-C. Carreau/Schröder, Karkoschka et al. (2012)

Astrogeology, 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

by Keith CowingApril 8, 2025

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.

Visualisation of the hypothesis for the observed stripe features, with a reflection grating located at the E ring. A zoomed-in view is shown in the bottom right corner. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, 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

by Keith CowingMarch 9, 2025June 9, 2025

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 […]