Titan

A New Angle on Titan

May 11, 2012

Here’s a great shot of Titan and Saturn acquired by Cassini on May 6, 2012 just after a pass by the haze-covered moon. It’s a color-composite made from images taken in Cassini’s red, green and blue color channels, and the resulting image was color adjusted a bit to appear more “Saturny”.

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African Lake Has a Twin on Titan

April 19, 2012

A large lake on Saturn’s cloud-covered Titan seems very similar to the Etosha Pan, a salt-encrusted dry lakebed in northern Namibia that periodically fills with water. As it turns out, Titan’s “great lake” may also be temporary.

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Rare Rain on Titan; Once Every 1,000 Years

March 26, 2012

Even though there are lakes and rivers of liquid hydrocarbons on the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan, the rains that feed them may come few and far between. According to data gathered by NASA’s Cassini mission, parts of Titan might not see rain for more than 1,000 years. And according to Dr. Ralph Lorenz, from [...]

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Photo Treat: Enceladus, Titan and Saturn’s Rings

March 20, 2012

Little Enceladus and enormous Titan are seen on either side of Saturn’s rings in this image, a color-composite made from raw images acquired by Cassini on March 12, 2012. The original images were taken in red, green and blue color channels, and with a little Photoshop editing I combined them into a roughly true-color view [...]

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Moons Large and Small

February 29, 2012

It may be one of the best images from Cassini yet this year! Cloud-covered Titan and tiny Prometheus (can you see it just above the rings on the right?) are literally dwarfed by their parent Saturn in an image captured on Jan. 5, 2012. Prometheus’ pinpoint shadow can also be seen on Saturn’s cloud tops, [...]

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Night Sky Guide: February 2012

February 1, 2012

Special thanks to Ninian Boyle astronomyknowhow.com for information in parts of this guide This month, the Solar System gives us a lot to observe and we’ll even start to see the ‘spring’ constellations appear later in the evenings. But February still has the grand constellations of winter, with mighty Orion as a centrepiece to long [...]

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Cassini Takes a Closer Look at Titan’s Sand Dunes

January 24, 2012

Titan is a world that is amazingly Earth-like in some ways, with rain, rivers, lakes and seas. Mind you, the liquid in this case is methane/ethane instead of water, at the bitterly cold conditions on the surface. Also like Earth, Titan has vast sand dune fields, covering about 10 million square kilometres (39 million square [...]

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Titan’s Layered Atmosphere is Surprisingly Earth-Like

January 17, 2012

Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, is in some ways the most Earth-like world in the solar system, with a thick nitrogen atmosphere, rain, rivers, lakes and seas. Albeit it is much colder, and liquid methane/ethane takes the place of water, but the hydrological processes are quite similar to those here. There may, however, also [...]

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Storms And Lakes On Titan Revealed By Computer Modeling

January 5, 2012

Thanks to the Cassini mission and the Huygens probe, we’ve glimpsed a wet world when science took a look at Saturn’s moon, Titan. Its atmosphere is rich in methane and its average temperature is about -300 degrees Fahrenheit (about 90 kelvins). Although the chemical composition is different than ours, Titan still has similar features such [...]

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A Balanced Budget on Titan

January 3, 2012

It’s been said many times that the most Earthlike world in our solar system is not a planet at all, but rather Saturn’s moon Titan. At first it may not seem obvious why; being only a bit larger than the planet Mercury and coated in a thick opaque atmosphere containing methane and hydrocarbons, Titan sure [...]

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AVIATR: An Airplane Mission for Titan

January 2, 2012

It has been said that the atmosphere on Titan is so dense that a person could strap a pair of wings on their back and soar through its skies. It’s a pretty fascinating thought. And Titan – Saturn’s largest moon – is a pretty fascinating place. After all, it’s the only other body in our [...]

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2011: Top Stories from the Best Year Ever for NASA Planetary Science!

December 31, 2011

A year ago, 2011 was proclaimed as the “Year of the Solar System” by NASA’s Planetary Science division. And what a year of excitement it was indeed for the planetary science community, amateur astronomers and the general public alike ! NASA successfully delivered astounding results on all fronts – On the Story of How We [...]

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Colorful Holiday Treats from Saturn

December 22, 2011

“Hey! Look what our Santa at Saturn has sent our way!” said Carolyn Porco, the Cassini imaging team lead, in a post on Twitter. This wonderful collection of just-released colorful images from the Saturn system are a holiday gift from the Cassini and CICLOPS (Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations)team. Above, Saturn’s third-largest moon, Dione, [...]

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Titan’s Colorful Crescent

December 16, 2011

Made from one of the most recent Cassini images, this is a color-composite showing a backlit Titan with its dense, multi-layered atmosphere scattering sunlight in different colors. Titan’s atmosphere is made up of methane and complex hydrocarbons and is ten times as thick as Earth’s. It is the only moon in our solar system known to have [...]

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A Tale of Three Moons: Is There Life in the Outer Solar System?

October 18, 2011

Until fairly recently, the search for life elsewhere in the solar system has focused primarily on Mars, as it is the most Earth-like of all the other planets in the solar system. The possibility of finding any kind of life farther out in the outer solar system was considered very unlikely at best; too cold, [...]

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Titan’s Technicolor Terrain

October 5, 2011

At the University of Nantes, a group of international scientists have been piecing together one of the most amazing jigsaw puzzles of all times… a color image of Saturn’s moon, Titan. For six years the Cassini mission has been busy gathering images and the resulting compilation was presented on October 4 by Stephane Le Mouelic [...]

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Book Review: A Dictionary of the Space Age

September 12, 2011

Writing a dictionary is not the same as writing a novel. While it might seem difficult to mess up a dictionary, even one with terminology that is as complicated as that used within the space industry – getting it right can be challenging. For those that follow space flight having such a dictionary can be [...]

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Titan’s Giant Cloud Explained

August 17, 2011

Titan is making news again, this time with Cassini images from 2010 showing a storm nearly as big as Texas.  Jonathan Mitchell from UCLA and his research team have published their findings which help answer the question: What could cause such large storms to develop on a freezing cold world? For starters, the huge arrow [...]

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Cassini Surveys the Dunes of Xanadu on Titan

August 10, 2011

The name “Xanadu” just sounds exotic and enticing, and given that this region on Titan is right next to Shangri-la, how can we not be intrigued by the latest radar image of this region taken by the Cassini spacecraft? While Titan itself is shrouded in mystery with its thick, hazy atmosphere, via radar, Cassini can [...]

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Insanely Awesome Raw Cassini Images of Titan and Enceladus

May 23, 2011

An incredible set of images are beaming back from the Cassini spacecraft as it orbits Saturn, snapping away at the sights. The moons Titan and Enceladus snuggling up together in front of Saturn’s rings creates an amazing view, especially when they are all lined up together. These were taken on May 21, 2011. I’ve posted [...]

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