08.06.10: Titan and the Case of the Missing Acetylene.

  
   It started with two papers… as of late, much good and bad science journalism has been committed to the mysteries of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan.  A photochemical smog shrouded world, Titan is a dynamic place, and would easily qualify as a planet in its own right if it were in a solo orbit about [...]

22.04.10-The Exotic World of Prometheus.

 The tiny shepherd world of Prometheus.
    The moons of Saturn continue to astound. The count now stands at 61, and one by one, NASA’s Cassini orbiter is giving us a close up look at these unique worlds, some for the first time. Last year, Cassini passed within 36,000 miles of Prometheus just the day after [...]

17.04.10- The Case of the Vanishing Moon: Solved.

The scale of the enormous and thin Phoebe Ring as recently imaged by Spitzer.
 
   Since its discovery by Giovanni Cassini in 1671, Saturn’s moon Iapetus has confounded astronomers. Even early on, observers knew something curious was going on with this far off moon; Iapetus varies in brightness between +10 & +12th magnitude as it orbits [...]

14.04.10: Milankovitch Cycles…On Titan?

 
An amazing sight; sunlight reflected off the Kraken Mare caught by Cassini! 
   NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has revealed an elusive mystery on the surface of Titan; namely, why does the northern hemisphere of the large moon contain numerous lake basins, while in the south they’re relatively scarce? Now, scientists at Caltech working with JPL think they may have [...]

22.03.10- On the Trail of Lunar Water.

 
    Last year’s big news story was the announcement of water on the Moon. This evidence came from five separate sources, and spanned over a decades’ worth of data. This climaxed with the October 9th impact of the LCROSS spacecraft in the quest for a moisture laden plume. Now, a reanalysis of lunar samples returned [...]

14.03.10-Record Lightning Storm Spotted by Cassini.

 
Saturn is turning out to be a very electrified place. Last year, NASA’s Cassini orbiter spied a massive storm that broke the solar system record; beginning in January 2009, this storm raged on for 7 ½ months, the longest recorded. This marks the ninth storm on Saturn thus recorded; these behemoths tend to be around 1,900 [...]

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