Saturn Archives

Enceladus, Icy Worlds, Saturn, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Enceladus’s Limit Cycle

by Keith CowingMarch 10, 2025March 9, 2025

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.

An illustration of the four main mechanisms of moon formation showing their typical characteristics. The moons in the solar system were likely formed by one or combinations of these four elementary mechanisms, which are shown from top to bottom in the order of the typical moon-to-mass ratios of the systems that they can form. -- astro-ph.EP

Icy Worlds, Saturn, Status Report

Understanding the Formation of Saturn’s Regular Moons in the Context of Giant Planet Moons Formation Scenarios

by Keith CowingMarch 10, 2025March 9, 2025

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 […]

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 […]

Astrogeology, Enceladus, Icy Worlds, Saturn, Status Report, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Enceladus’s Tidal Heating

by Keith CowingMarch 7, 2025March 7, 2025

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 […]

Astrogeology, 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

by Keith CowingFebruary 12, 2025February 12, 2025

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. […]

Distribution of fluvial and lacustrine features on Titan. Most of Titan’s valley networks, lakes, and seas are concentrated at polar latitudes, though valley networks are comparably more globally distributed (Miller et al. 2021). Alluvial fans are primarily found at Titan’s mid-latitudes (Birch et al. 2016). At both poles, Titan’s largest lakes, seas, and paleoseas concentrate on the eastern hemisphere, while most of the smaller lakes are on the opposite hemisphere (Birch et al. 2017). The largest cluster of small lakes are in Titan’s ‘Lake District’, a region elevated above the seas by 100’s of meters. Major regions and features are labeled, along with approximated locations of the Huygens lander and the Dragonfly landing site at Selk Crater. -- astro-ph.EP

Astrochemistry, 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

by Keith CowingFebruary 5, 2025February 5, 2025

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 […]

Jupiter and Saturn as seen in near-infrared by the JWST. (NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)

Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Exploration Gear & Tech, Gas Giants, Icy Worlds, Jupiter, Saturn, Status Report

Simultaneous Evolutionary Fits for Jupiter and Saturn Incorporating Fuzzy Cores

by Keith CowingDecember 24, 2024December 24, 2024

With the recent realization that there likely are stably-stratified regions in the interiors of both Jupiter and Saturn, we construct new non-adiabatic, inhomogeneous evolutionary models with the same microphysics for […]

This is a montage of NASA Hubble Space Telescope views of our solar system's four giant outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, each shown in enhanced color. The images were taken over nearly 10 years, from 2014 to 2024. This long baseline allows astronomers to track seasonal changes in each planet's turbulent atmosphere, with the sharpness of the NASA planetary flyby probes of the 1980s. These images were taken under a program called OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy). NASA, ESA, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), Michael H. Wong (UC Berkeley); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Astronomy & Telescopes, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Jupiter, Neptune, Press Release, Saturn, Uranus

Hubble Celebrates A Decade Of Tracking Outer Planets

by Keith CowingDecember 10, 2024December 10, 2024

Encountering Neptune in 1989, NASA’s Voyager mission completed humankind’s first close-up exploration of the four giant outer planets of our solar system. Collectively, since their launch in 1977, the twin […]

Astrochemistry, Astrogeology, Atmospheres, Climate, Weather, Biochemistry & Organic Chemistry, Cryobiology, Exploration Gear & Tech, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Missions & Hardware, Press Release, Robotics/Rovers/UAVs, Titan, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Launch Services Contract Awarded For Dragonfly Astrobiology Mission

by Keith CowingNovember 26, 2024

NASA has selected SpaceX to provide launch services for the Dragonfly mission, a rotorcraft lander mission under NASA’s New Frontiers Program, designed to explore Saturn’s moon Titan. The mission will […]

NASA image of Titan using the Cassini VIMS (visual and infrared mapping spectrometer) instrument. One impact crater is visible near the center. The dark areas near the equator are organic-rich sand dunes, and the dark areas in the north polar region are liquid methane/ethane lakes. White clouds are also visible in the northern hemisphere. -- Credit NASA/ Cassini VIMS

Astrogeology, Biogeochemical Cycles & Geobiology, Habitable Zones, Icy Worlds, Imaging & Spectroscopy, Mapping, Geodesy, Cartography, Bathymetry, Press Release, Saturn, Titan, Water/Hycean Worlds & Oceanography

Titan Has An Insulating Methane-rich Crust Up To Six Miles Thick

by Keith CowingNovember 25, 2024November 25, 2024

Saturn’s largest moon Titan is the only place other than Earth known to have an atmosphere and liquids in the form of rivers, lakes and seas on its surface. Because […]