Latest Moons of Saturn Stories

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has detected a faint, partial ring orbiting with one small moon of Saturn, and has confirmed the presence of another partial ring orbiting with a second moon. This is further evidence that most of the planet's small, inner moons orbit within partial or complete rings.Recent Cassini images show material, called ring arcs, extending ahead of and behind the small moons Anthe and Methone in their orbits. The new findings indicate that the gravitational influence of...

PASADENA, Calif. -- In a feat of interplanetary sharpshooting, NASA's Cassini spacecraft has pinpointed precisely where the icy jets erupt from the surface of Saturn's geologically active moon Enceladus. New carefully targeted pictures reveal exquisite details in the prominent south polar "tiger stripe" fractures from which the jets emanate. The images show the fractures are about 300 meters (980 feet) deep, with V-shaped inner walls. The outer flanks of some of the fractures show...

NASA's Cassini spacecraft is going to get another up-close-and-personal look at Saturn's moon Enceladus on Monday. Scientists hope the glimpse at fractures on the icy moon's surface will provide clues as to how the jets spewing from them form. The spacecraft will zoom past the tiny moon just 30 miles (50 kilometers) over the surface. Immediately after closest approach, Cassini will train its cameras onto the fissures that run along Enceladus' south pole. Jets of icy...

Shorty after 9:03 p.m. Pacific Time, the Cassini spacecraft began sending data to Earth following a close flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus. During closest approach, Cassini successfully passed only 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the surface of the tiny moon. Cassini's signal was picked up by the Deep Space Network station in Canberra, Australia, and relayed to the Cassini mission control at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "We are happy to report that Cassini's begun...

Fractures, or "tiger stripes," where icy jets erupt on Saturn's moon Enceladus will be the target of a close flyby by the Cassini spacecraft on Monday, Aug. 11.Cassini will zoom past the tiny moon a mere 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the surface. Just after closest approach, all of the spacecraft's cameras -- covering infrared wavelengths, where temperatures are mapped, as well as visible light and ultraviolet -- will focus on the fissures running along the moon's south pole. That...

By Philip Haldiman, The Arizona Daily Star, Tucson Jul. 31--Our planet isn't the only heavenly body with liquid on its surface. Scientists from the University of Arizona and NASA on Wednesday announced at least one of the large, lakelike features on a moon of Saturn is wet. The moon, Titan, contains liquid hydrocarbons and ethane, scientists said. Besides Earth, this makes Titan the only known body in our solar system with liquid on its surface, NASA said in a press release. The lake...

Four students have won the Cassini Scientist for a Day contest, with most choosing Rhea, Saturn's second-largest moon, as the best place for scientists to study using NASA's Cassini spacecraft.Contest participants had to choose one of three target areas for Cassini's camera: Saturn's moon Enceladus, Rhea, or a section of Saturn's rings that includes the tiny moon Pan. The students had to write an essay explaining why their chosen snapshot would yield the most scientific rewards, and the...

A team of scientists led from the UK has discovered that the rapid changes in Saturn's F ring can be attributed to small moonlets causing perturbations. Their results are reported in Nature (5th June 2008). Saturn's F ring has long been of interest to scientists as its features change on timescales from hours to years and it is probably the only location in the solar system where large scale collisions happen on a daily basis. Understanding these processes helps scientists understand the...

Two decades of scrutinizing Saturn are finally paying off, as scientists have discovered a wave pattern, or oscillation, in Saturn's atmosphere only visible from Earth every 15 years. The discovery of the wave pattern is the result of a 22-year campaign observing Saturn from Earth (the longest study of temperature outside Earth ever recorded), and the Cassini spacecraft's observations of temperature changes in the giant planet's atmosphere over time. The Cassini infrared results, which appear...

A monster storm spawning bolts of lightning 10,000 times more powerful than any seen on Earth is raging on the ringed planet Saturn. The powerful electrical storm cropped up in Saturn's southern hemisphere five months ago, when it was first spotted by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, and has persevered to become the planet's longest continuously recorded tempest to date. "We saw similar storms in 2004 and 2006 that each lasted for nearly a month, but this storm is...