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Image: Groovy rings of Saturn

From afar, Saturn's rings look like a solid, homogenous disk of material. But upon closer examination from Cassini, we see that there are varied structures in the rings at almost every scale imaginable.

Gullies on Vesta suggest past water-mobilized flows

(Phys.org)—Protoplanet Vesta, visited by NASA's Dawn spacecraft from 2011 to 2013, was once thought to be completely dry, incapable of retaining water because of the low temperatures and pressures at its surface. However, ...

Space exploration promises to be spectacular in 2015

There is no doubt that 2014 was a fantastic year for planetary sciences – the high points were the successful landing of Philae on comet 67P, the discovery of methane by the Curiosity rover on Mars and a doubling in the ...

NASA image: Saturn's upper cloud layers

(Phys.org) —What the viewer might perceive to be Saturn's surface is really just the tops of its uppermost cloud layers. Everything we see is the result of fluid dynamics. Astronomers study Saturn's cloud dynamics in part ...

Five questions about the Rosetta mission

On November 12, the Rosetta spacecraft's Philae lander is due to land on the surface of a comet. As a space scientist working with those who have instruments on board, I can't wait. I met up with some of the Rosetta scientists ...

Image: Crescent Mimas

A thin sliver of Mimas is illuminated, the long shadows showing off its many craters, indicators of the moon's violent history.

NASA image: God of the Gap

(Phys.org) —Saturn's moon Pan, named for the Greek god of shepherds, rules over quite a different domain: the Encke gap in Saturn's rings.

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