As NASA's Cassini dove close to Saturn in its final year, the spacecraft provided intricate detail on the workings of Saturn's complex rings, new analysis shows.
Space Exploration
Jun 14, 2019
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The Solar System's second largest planet both in mass and size, Saturn is best known for its rings. These are divided by a wide band, the Cassini Division, whose formation was poorly understood until very recently. Now, researchers ...
Space Exploration
Jun 11, 2019
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Saturn's hazy moon Titan has a long-lived Earth-like winter polar vortex supercharged by the moon's peculiar chemistry, according to new research published in AGU's journal Geophysical Research Letters.
Space Exploration
Apr 29, 2019
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Welcome to Saturn as you've probably never seen it. It's always awe-inspiring to see the clockwork motion of the heavens transpire in real time. In a slow motion universe, occultations give us the chance to see the cosmos ...
Space Exploration
Apr 04, 2019
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A pair of researchers, one with the University of Maryland the other with Southwest Research Institute, has found what they believe is a plausible explanation for the existence of the ocean beneath the surface of one of Saturn's ...
Saturn's distinctive rings were observed in unprecedented detail by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, and scientists have now used those observations to probe the interior of the giant planet and obtain the first precise determination ...
Space Exploration
Jan 18, 2019
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One of the last acts of NASA's Cassini spacecraft before its death plunge into Saturn's hydrogen and helium atmosphere was to coast between the planet and its rings and let them tug it around, essentially acting as a gravity ...
Space Exploration
Jan 17, 2019
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On Saturn, changing seasons can mean changes in the haziness—and color—of the skies.
Space Exploration
Dec 28, 2018
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New NASA research confirms that Saturn is losing its iconic rings at the maximum rate estimated from Voyager 1 & 2 observations made decades ago. The rings are being pulled into Saturn by gravity as a dusty rain of ice particles ...
Space Exploration
Dec 17, 2018
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Sometimes it's all about perspective. This very convincing image of a conjoined moon masquerading as a snowman is actually two separate Saturnian moons – Dione and Rhea – taken from such an angle by the international ...
Space Exploration
Dec 10, 2018
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Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn, along with Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, is classified as a gas giant. Together, these four planets are sometimes referred to as the Jovian, meaning "Jupiter-like", planets.
Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn (that became the namesake of Saturday), equated to the Greek Kronos (the Titan father of Zeus) the Babylonian Ninurta and to the Hindu Shani. Saturn's symbol represents the god's sickle (Unicode: ♄).
The planet Saturn is composed of hydrogen, with small proportions of helium and trace elements. The interior consists of a small core of rock and ice, surrounded by a thick layer of metallic hydrogen and a gaseous outer layer. The outer atmosphere is generally bland in appearance, although long-lived features can appear. Wind speeds on Saturn can reach 1,800 km/h, significantly faster than those on Jupiter. Saturn has a planetary magnetic field intermediate in strength between that of Earth and the more powerful field around Jupiter.
Saturn has a prominent system of rings, consisting mostly of ice particles with a smaller amount of rocky debris and dust. Sixty-one known moons orbit the planet, not counting hundreds of "moonlets" within the rings. Titan, Saturn's largest and the Solar System's second largest moon (after Jupiter's Ganymede), is larger than the planet Mercury and is the only moon in the Solar System to possess a significant atmosphere.
This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA
