Titan back in the spotlight

saturn really has some amazing moons. who can forget the release of esa's huygens images of the surface of titan back in 2005? the image above was made by an amateur image processor who had access to the huygens data, and it makes titan look strangely familiar. today, esa announced that the amount of liquid hydrocarbons on titan's surface surpass the total amount on earth by a factor of hundreds. there, hydrocarbons rain from the sky and collect in lakes and pools.

are we off to titan now, bush?

seriously, this is really cool. especially from the perspective of astrobiology and our interest in how complex chemistry forms in environments very different from that on earth.

Saturn from Below

well, the cassini-huygens mission has certainly provided us with magnificent views of saturn since its launch. here is an impressive image of the planet from below (incidentally, this was today's APOD). and let's not forget the recent news of the hexagonal feature on the planet's north pole, which has scientists wondering... more to come, i'm sure. (image credit: APOD)

Saturn Movies

i'm a bit late on this, but hubble recently released three movies of saturn, two of them showing several of saturn's moons in orbit around the planet, and the third one showing details of the planet's southern hemisphere. the "movies" are actually constructed from only about a dozen images, that were turned into the hundreds of images needed to make a movie with some fancy software. either way, the movies are quite cool. (image credit: hubble)

Enceladus

enceladus, one of saturn's 56 known (!) moons, is, in my opinion, one the solar system's most beautiful moons. (though, star wars fans might opt for mimas, which bears a striking resemblance to the death star.) since the nasa/esa/isa cassini-huygens spacecraft - whose objective is the study of saturn and its moons - began observing the moon, it has made a number of interesting discoveries. one of these is that the moon has geysers that are spewing ice (water ice, that is) into space. now, scientists are proposing that the decay of radioactive isotopes of aluminum and iron is producing a large amount of heat within the moon's core. this heat is then released through cracks in the moon's surface, thereby spewing out water from pockets of liquid water near the surface. very cool. plus, now i have another bubble picture on my blog.

Beautiful Saturn

the above image was return by nasa's cassini spacecraft, which has been climbing to higher and higher inclinations over the past months in order to see the planet from above. i'm going to quote the below from the cassini website, since it was written so nice and poetically:

"surely one of the most gorgeous sights the solar system has to offer, saturn sits enveloped by the full splendor of its stately rings.

taking in the rings in their entirety was the focus of this particular imaging sequence. therefore, the camera exposure times were just right to capture the dark-side of its rings, but longer than that required to properly expose the globe of sunlit saturn. consequently, the sunlit half of the planet is overexposed.

between the blinding light of day and the dark of night, there is a strip of twilight on the globe where colorful details in the atmosphere can be seen. bright clouds dot the bluish-grey northern polar region here. in the south, the planet's night side glows golden in reflected light from the rings' sunlit face."

more images here, and a movie here. (image credit: nasa)