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New NASA Cassini Image of Saturn ReleasedThe narrow angle camera onboard the Cassini spacecraft took a series of exposures of Saturn and its rings and moons on February 9, 2004, which were composited to create this stunning, color image. At the time, Cassini was 69.4 million kilometers (43.1 million miles) from Saturn, less than half the distance from Earth to the Sun. The image contrast and colors have been slightly enhanced to aid visibility. The smallest features visible in this image are approximately 540 kilometers across (336 miles). Fine details in the rings and atmosphere are beginning to emerge, and...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2004 July 16 The Bubble Credit & Copyright: Ken Crawford Explanation: Blown by the wind from a star, this tantalizing, ghostly apparition is cataloged as NGC 7635, but known simply as The Bubble Nebula. Astronomer Ken Crawford's striking view combines a long exposure through a hydrogen alpha filter with color images to reveal the intricate details of this cosmic bubble and its environment. Although it looks delicate, the...

Mystery of Saturn's Two-Faced Moon Solved Jeanna Bryner Staff Writer SPACE.com Tue Oct 9, 8:45 AM ET Saturn's moon Iapetus has virtually no gray. Rather, its features are all stark black and white. The appearance has long puzzled astronomers. New detailed images suggest sunlight is melting ice on one side of Iapetus, leaving the moon's dark surface exposed, while the opposite half retains its reflective ice-mixed shell. Since the moon's discovery by Giovanni Domenico Cassini in 1671, Iapetus' appearance has baffled astronomers. The leading edge of Iapetus, which faces the direction of its orbit, is black as asphalt, while its...

The first pictures revealing the surface of Saturn's moon, Titan, were shown from Europe's Huygens probe. You will not believe what's on the moon!!

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2004 October 1 Earth Nears Asteroid Toutatis Illustration Credit: E. De Jong and S. Suzuki, JPL, NASA Explanation: On Wednesday, September 29, the Earth came within one million miles of the asteroid Toutatis -- the closest predicted aproach of our fair planet to a sizable asteroid or comet in this century. Coming within one million miles or about 4 times the Earth-Moon distance, Earth would appear to be...

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - The international Cassini spacecraft has spied a tiny new moon hidden in a gap in Saturn's outer ring, scientists reported Tuesday. The moon was spotted earlier this month orbiting in the center of the Keeler gap, making waves in the gap edges as it circles. Tentatively called S/2005 S1, the moon measures four miles across and is about 85,000 miles from the center of Saturn. More observations are needed to determine the shape of the moon's orbit, but preliminary findings show it is in the middle of the gap, said Joseph Spitale, a planetary scientist at...

New pictures of Saturn's glow By Roger Highfield, Science Editor Last Updated: 2:33pm BST 01/06/2007 Saturn’s neon glow, represented in brilliant shades of electric blue, sapphire and mint green, has been captured by the Cassini spacecraft while flying over the unlit side of the planet’s rings.   The false-colour mosaic was created from 25 images taken by Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer over a period of 13 hours This image, providing a striking view of the ringed planet, was taken when the spacecraft was one million miles away. In this view, Cassini was looking down on the northern, unlit...

The Cassini radar image (left) shows one of Titan's seas is larger than Lake Superior (right) Nasa's Cassini probe has found evidence for seas, probably filled with liquid hydrocarbons, at the high northern latitudes of Saturn's moon Titan.The dark features, detected by Cassini's radar, are much bigger than any lakes already detected on Titan. The largest is some 100,000 sq km (39,000 sq miles) - greater in extent than North America's Lake Superior. It covers a greater fraction of Titan than the proportion of Earth covered by the Black Sea. The Black Sea is the Earth's largest inland sea...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2003 September 18 Saturn by Three Credit: E. Karkoschka (Univ. Arizona), NASA Explanation: These three views of Saturn were recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope on March 7th of this year, as the southern hemisphere of the solar system's most gorgeous planet reached its maximum 27 degree tilt toward Earth. The images used to construct the false-color pictures were made through a combination of filters covering the electromagnetic...

Scientists reported Thursday on the strongest sign yet that Saturn's giant moon may have a salty ocean beneath its chilly surface. If confirmed, it would catapult Titan into an elite class of solar system moons harboring water, an essential ingredient for life. Titan boasts methane-filled seas at the poles and a possible lake near the equator. And it's long been speculated that Titan contains a hidden liquid layer, based on mathematical modeling and electric field measurements made by the Huygens spacecraft that landed on the surface in 2005. The latest evidence is still indirect, but outside scientists said it's probably...

Cassini Finds an Atmosphere on Saturn's Moon Enceladus March 16, 2005 (Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory) The Cassini spacecraft's two close flybys of Saturn's icy moon Enceladus have revealed that the moon has a significant atmosphere. Scientists, using Cassini's magnetometer instrument for their studies, say the source may be volcanism, geysers, or gases escaping from the surface or the interior. When Cassini had its first encounter with Enceladus on Feb. 17 at an altitude of 1,167 kilometers (725 miles), the magnetometer instrument saw a striking signature in the magnetic field. On March 9, Cassini approached to within 500 kilometers (310 miles)...

Cassini Finds Organic Material on Titan Tue Apr 26, 9:43 AM ET Add to My Yahoo! Science - AP PASADENA, Calif. - A close flyby of Saturn's big moon Titan by the international Cassini spacecraft revealed an upper atmosphere brimming with complex organic material, a finding that could hold clues to how life arose on Earth, scientists said Monday. Photo AP Photo Cassini flew within 638 miles of Titan's frozen surface on April 16 and discovered a hydrocarbon-laced upper atmosphere. Titan's atmosphere is mainly made up of nitrogen and methane, the simplest type of hydrocarbon. But scientists were surprised to...

PASADENA, Calif., July 1 — The first spacecraft to orbit Saturn, arriving late Wednesday, swiftly turned its cameras on the planet's rings of ice and rock, and transmitted striking pictures of the encircling luminous strands, some with scalloped edges, strawlike textures and rippling waves that spread across the shimmering disk. Scientists could not have been more delighted. As the ring pictures from the Cassini spacecraft were received here Thursday morning, Dr. Carolyn C. Porco, the mission's chief photographic interpreter, said their beauty and clarity were "just mind-blowing." They were far superior in number and close-up detail to any previous images...

  Edge-on image of Saturn's F-ring. Credit: NASA/JPL Cassini-Huygens mission.   Nov 12, 2007Kinks in Saturn's RingsBraids and twists in the rings of Saturn suggest activity in addition to gravitational attraction. Could electricity be one of the formative agents? Saturn's F-ring was discovered by Pioneer 11 during its 1979 flyby of the giant planet. When the Voyager 1 space probe passed by Saturn in November of 1980, it returned stunning pictures of Saturn's rings that were completely unanticipated. Two of the most intriguing discoveries were the "spokes" seen drifting above the ring plane and the twisted and interlaced structure...

Samples of icy spray shooting from Saturn's moon Enceladus collected during Cassini spacecraft flybys show the strongest evidence yet for the existence of a large-scale, subterranean saltwater ocean, says a new international study led by the University of Heidelberg and involving the University of Colorado Boulder. The new discovery was made during the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn, a collaboration of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. Launched in 1997, the mission spacecraft arrived at the Saturn system in 2004 and has been touring the giant ringed planet and its vast moon system ever since. The plumes...

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured never-before-seen views of Saturn from perspectives high above and below the planet's rings. Over the last several months, the spacecraft has climbed to higher and higher inclinations, providing its cameras with glimpses of the planet and rings that have scientists gushing.

PASADENA, Calif. - The international Cassini spacecraft sent back a natural-color image of Saturn showing the planet's rings are shades of pink, gray and a bit of brown, scientists announced Thursday. The image was taken June 21, a few days before the spacecraft entered orbit, from 4 million miles below the rings. The rings are mostly ice, which is white if it is pure. Researchers at NASA (news - web sites)'s Jet Propulsion Laboratory believe the different colors reflect the presence of other materials, such as rock or carbon compounds. Detailed close-ups sent immediately after Cassini entered orbit on June...

Phoebe probably distant traveller Cassini's images of Phoebe Images of Saturn's moon Phoebe from the Cassini spacecraft suggest it may be a relic of objects that formed billions of years ago in the outer Solar System. The pictures seem to show ice in its craters, boosting the theory that it is more similar to comets and very distant Solar System objects than to asteroids. Scientists think Phoebe migrated inwards and was probably captured by Saturn's gravity billions of years ago. Several tiny Saturn moons may have been blasted out of Phoebe by space impacts. "Battered and beat-up as [Phoebe] is,...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2004 May 25 Moon Between the Stones Credit & Copyright: Philip Perkins Explanation: Despite clouds and rain showers astronomer Phillip Perkins managed to spot a reddened, eclipsed Moon between the stones of this well known monument to the Sun during May's total lunar eclipse, from Stonehenge, England. When he recorded this dramatic picture, the rising Moon was only about 5 degrees above the horizon, but conveniently located through...

Astronomy Picture of the Day Discover the cosmos! Each day a different image or photograph of our fascinating universe is featured, along with a brief explanation written by a professional astronomer. 2004 September 3 Hurricane Frances Approaches Florida Credit: NASA, NOAA Explanation: A major hurricane is heading for Florida. Hurricane Frances, one of the stronger storm systems of modern times, may cross the eastern coast of Florida sometime tomorrow. Those in the path of a hurricane should take precautions. For example, NASA's Kennedy Space Center has completely shut down. The orbiting GOES-12 satellite took the above image of Hurricane...