Saturn | Universe Today

Having just returned the most detailed images yet of Saturn's 500km-wide moon Enceladus, it is little wonder scientists are excited about this mysterious natural satellite. However, in new research recently published, the results aren't related to the recent "skeet shot" Cassini carried out above the moon's south pole (although there is some common ground). The paper's origins started out in July 2005 when Enceladus' plume of gas (containing organic compounds) was discovered fizzing from the moon's surface, inside the "tiger stripes" just imaged by Cassini.

In some computer models, this plume is attributed to a sub-surface ocean. This possibility has led scientists to speculate that it might be an ideal environment for basic forms of life to thrive. What's more, although the Cassini spacecraft isn't equipped to directly search for life, it may be able to detect the signature of life…
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The Cassini spacecraft performed another 'skeet shoot' over Enceladus' south pole on Friday, and returned some absolutely stunning images. Or as Carolyn Porco, the imaging team leader for the spacecraft said, "a bounty of positively glorious views of one of the most fabulous places in the solar system." The resolution of the mosaic shown here is just 12.3 meters per pixel! Visible are large house-sized boulders, and the deep "tiger stripes" from which the plumes of material are being produced. One source of the jets producing the plumes is identified in the upper right on this image. Enjoy these great images now because the next flyby of Enceladus won't be for another year. And at that time, the sun won't be shining as predominantly on moon's south pole, so next year the view of this region of Enceladus will be much dimmer. Here's more…
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What lurks in the eerie fractures of Enceladus that slash across the moon's south polar region? The Cassini spacecraft will make a Halloween flyby of Enceladus and focus its cameras and other optical remote sensing instruments on the mysterious tiger-stripe-like features seen on this strange moon of Saturn. This flyby comes just over three weeks after a previous flyby of the same moon, and then just a few days later, on November 3, Cassini will make a flyby of Titan, on the inbound leg of its orbit around the ringed world. What tricks do the Cassini scientists have up their sleeves for this flyby? Will we be treated to some spectacular images? And what about those spooky sounds from Saturn?
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The Cassini mission has released some of the most detailed images of Saturn's poles yet, revealing vast cyclones churning up the gas giant's atmosphere in the north and south. These observations show very similar storms to the south pole observations imaged by the NASA spacecraft in 2006, only in far better detail. It is believed the north and south cyclones are generated by violent thunderstorms deep inside Saturn's atmosphere; water condensing inside these storms output heat, fuelling the vortex extending 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometres) in diameter. The smallest features resolved are 120 kilometre (75 mile)-wide cumulus clouds rotating at velocities in excess of 325 mph (530 kph), more than twice the wind speed possible on Earth…

…and the mystery north pole hexagon is still there.
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The Cassini spacecraft will make two close passes of Saturn's geyser-spewing moon Enceladus this month. The first one on October 9 is the closest flyby yet of any moon of Saturn, at a white-knuckle distance of only 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the surface. The not-quite-as-scary Halloween flyby on Oct. 31 will be farther out, at 196 kilometers (122 miles). The focus of the Oct. 9 is the plume of the moon's geyser, and the spacecraft's fields and particles instruments will venture deeper into the plume than ever before, directly sampling the particles and gases. Scientists are intrigued by the possibility that liquid water, perhaps even an ocean, may exist beneath the surface of Enceladus. Trace amounts of organics have also been detected, raising tantalizing possibilities about the moon's habitability.
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While Saturn and its rings are beautiful and wondrous, the sounds of Saturn are eerie and strange. Scientists have been trying to understand the bizarre radio emissions that come from the ringed planet, called the Saturn Kilometric Radiation (SKR). Scientists have used observations from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft build a 3-D picture of these intense radio emissions emanating from Saturn's magnetic field. The SKR radio emissions are generated by high-energy electrons spiraling around magnetic field lines threaded through Saturn’s auroras.
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Saturn's enigmatic rings may be much older and also much more massive than previously thought, according to a new study. Because Saturn's rings look so clean and bright, it was thought the rings were younger than the planet itself, which is estimated to be about 4.5 billion years old. But using data from the Cassini spacecraft's UVIS (Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph) instrument, Principal Investigator Dr. Larry Esposito and his team used computer simulations to study colliding particles in Saturn's rings and their erosion by meteorites. Their results support the possibility that Saturn's rings formed billions of years ago, perhaps at the time when giant impacts excavated the great basins on the Moon. The findings also suggest that giant exoplanets may also commonly have rings.
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The Cassini spacecraft recently flew through the plane of Saturn's rings and took this straight-on image of the G ring, showing a bright arc of material seen here as it rounds the ring's edge, or ansa. The spacecraft also took images of the moons Mimas and Calypso (see below). In the image here, the diffuse glow at left shows the extended nature of this faint ring. The view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from less than a degree below the ringplane. The ring moved against the background stars during this exposure, creating the star trails seen here. Cassini scientists and engineers are preparing for an upcoming flyby of the moon Enceladus on October 9. This is the second of seven targeted Enceladus fly-bys in the Extended Mission., and the spacecraft will pass through the moon's geyser-like plumes in an attempt to measure fields and particles.
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NASA's Cassini spacecraft has imaged 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 nearby moons on ring particles might be the deciding factor in whether an arc or complete ring is formed.
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Cassini scientists have been "bee-busy" poring over the images from the August 11 flyby of Saturn's geyser-spewing moon Enceladus, says Carolyn Porco, the lead for the imaging team. And quickly, they have found exactly what they were looking for: Cassini has pinpointed precisely where the icy jets erupt from the moon's geologically active moon surface. Enceladus. "This is the mother lode for us," said Porco, "a place that may ultimately reveal just exactly what kind of environment — habitable or not — we have within this tortured little moon."
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Scientists for the Cassini mission called their flyby of Saturn's small moon Enceladus on August 11 a "skeet shoot" – partially in honor of the current Olympic games underway, but mostly because the spacecraft would be trying to shoot rapidly at the moon with its array of cameras and scientific instruments. As the images begin to stream back, the scientists are definitely excited about what they're seeing. "What a dazzling success!" said Carolyn Porco, the Cassini Imaging Team Leader. "There doesn't even appear to be any smear." Scientists compared Cassini's fast flyby of Enceladus to trying to capture a sharp, unsmeared picture of a roadside billboard about a mile away with a 2,000 mm telephoto lens held out the window of a car moving at 50 mph. The imaging team is still poring over the pictures to see if they were successful in "shooting" their target: the active vent regions on the "tiger stripe" –like features on the moon's south pole that create the geysers on Enceladus. But the amazingly clear images show a fractured surface littered with boulders and what Porco said could possibly be ice blocks.
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The interiors of the two gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn, are pretty extreme places. With atmospheric pressures of around 70 million Earth atmospheres, the phases of material become a bit difficult to understand. Usually when we think of a liquid metal, we have thoughts about liquid mercury at room temperature (or the reassembling liquid metal T-1000 played by Robert Patrick in the film Terminator 2), rarely do we consider two of the most abundant elements in the Universe to be a liquid metal in certain conditions. And yet, this is what a team of physicists from UC Berkley are claiming; helium and hydrogen can mix together, forced by the massive pressures near the cores of Jupiter and Saturn, forming a liquid metal alloy, possibly changing our perception of what lies beneath those Jovian storms…
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Saturn's tiny moon Enceladus is of big interest to planetary scientists trying to understand the dynamics of the moon's geysers and fissures. On August 11, the Cassini spacecraft will swoop by Enceladus for a close flyby, just 50 kilometers (30 miles) from the surface, with the fractures, or "tiger stripes" near the moon's south pole, where icy jets erupt as the target of study for the Cassini instruments. "Our main goal is to get the most detailed images and remote sensing data ever of the geologically active features on Enceladus," said Paul Helfenstein, a Cassini imaging team associate at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. "From this data we may learn more about how eruptions, tectonics, and seismic activity alter the moon's surface. We will get an unprecedented high-resolution view of the active area immediately following the closest approach."
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The story: The Lucifer Project is allegedly the biggest conspiracy theory NASA could possibly be involved in. First, back in 2003, the space agency (in co-operation with secret and powerful organizations) dropped the Galileo probe deep into Jupiter's atmosphere. On board, was a significant quantity of plutonium. As the probe fell though the atmosphere, NASA hoped atmospheric pressures would create an implosion, generating a nuclear explosion thereby kick-starting a chain reaction, turning the gas giant into a second Sun. They failed. So, in a second attempt, they will drop the Cassini probe (again, laden with plutonium) deep into Saturn's atmosphere in two years time, so this smaller gas giant can succeed where Jupiter failed…

The reality: As investigated briefly in Project Lucifer: Will Cassini Turn Saturn into a Second Sun? (Part 1), we looked at some of the technical problems behind Galileo and Cassini being used as makeshift nuclear weapons. They cannot generate an explosion for many reasons, but the main points are: 1) Tiny pellets of plutonium used to heat and power the probes are in separate, damage-proof cylinders. 2) The plutonium is not weapon grade, meaning the 238Pu makes a very inefficient fissionable fuel. 3) The probes will burn up and break apart, therefore disallowing any chance of lumps of plutonium forming "critical mass" (besides, there is no chance the plutonium could possibly form a configuration to create an implosion-triggered device).

OK, so Galileo and Cassini cannot be used as crude nuclear weapons. But say if there was a nuclear explosion inside Saturn? Could it cause a chain reaction in the core, creating a second Sun?

• Project Lucifer: Will Cassini Turn Saturn into a Second Sun? (Part 1)
• Project Lucifer: Will Cassini Turn Saturn into a Second Sun? (Part 2)

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The story: On October 15th 1997, the Cassini-Huygens mission blasted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to explore Saturn and its moons. It continues to study the ringed gas giant today and its mission has been extended till 2010. Cassini is is powered by 32.8 kg (72 lbs) of plutonium fuel. A radioactive power source is the only option for missions travelling beyond the orbit of Mars as sunlight is too weak for solar panels to be effective. However, NASA (in association with secret organizations, such as the Illuminati or the Freemasons) wants to use this plutonium for a "higher purpose", dropping Cassini deep into Saturn at the end of its mission where atmospheric pressures will be so large that it will compress the probe, detonating like a nuclear bomb. What's more, this will trigger a chain reaction, kick-starting nuclear fusion, turning Saturn into a fireball. This is what has become known as The Lucifer Project. This second sun will have dire consequences for us on Earth, killing millions from the huge influx of radiation by this newborn star. Earth's loss becomes the Saturn moon Titan's gain, suddenly it is habitable and the organizations playing "God" can start a new civilization in the Saturn system. What's more, exactly the same thing was attempted when the Galileo probe was dropped into Jupiter's atmosphere in 2003…

The reality: Now that the Cassini mission has been extended by two years, we can expect this conspiracy theory to become more and more vocal in the coming months. But like the Galileo/Jupiter/second sun theory, this one is just as inaccurate, once again using bad science to scare people (much like Planet X then)…

• Project Lucifer: Will Cassini Turn Saturn into a Second Sun? (Part 1)
• Project Lucifer: Will Cassini Turn Saturn into a Second Sun? (Part 2)

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Saturn’s gorgeous rings. Geysers on Enceladus. Methane lakes on Titan. These are just a few of the images that stand out from the Cassini mission’s four year survey of Saturn and its remarkable system of rings and moons. On June 30 the Cassini spacecraft completes its primary mission at the ringed planet, and now will embark on an extended two year mission, with hopes of studying more closely the most intriguing targets, Titan and Enceladus and the interaction between Saturn’s icy moons and rings.
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Scientists from the Cassini mission are finding Saturn's rings to be very dynamic; constantly changing and evolving. This is especially true for one of Saturn's outermost rings, the F ring. This ring can change rapidly, sometimes on a timescale of hours, and astronomers believe it's probably the only location in the solar system where large scale collisions happen on a daily basis. New images from the Cassini spacecraft have revealed unprecedented detail of this ring, including evidence that several small, unseen moons collide with other ring particles and cause perturbations called jets, streamers and fans.
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Every year my car insurance company provides a free road atlas that helps me get where I need to go. Now, the imaging team from the Cassini spacecraft is ensuring that future travelers will be able to find their way around Saturn's icy moons by providing detailed atlases of the surface features of these remote satellites. The Cassini Imaging Team just released the third in a series of atlases, this one charting the fractured, 1,125 kilometer-wide Dione. To do this, they stitched together 449 high resolution images of the moon to produce a global map. These atlases are being released simultaneously to the public and the scientific community, available with just a click or two of your mouse. So, get your free atlases here!
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Question: What are the rings of Saturn made of?

Answer: Saturn's rings are made of ice chunks of various sizes surrounded by Saturn's 60 moons and moonlets!

Some of the chunks of ice, ranging in size from mere microns to several meters have been in existence since the formation of Saturn itself; while others are continuously broken down and reformed by repeated collisions with each other.

Scientists have categorized several distinct rings based on size and composition and each ring is separated by a visible gap.

The way you learned your ABC's in Kindergarten does not apply when describing Saturn's rings. Beginning from the innermost ring and moving progressively outward, they are not in alphabetical order.

The faint innermost ring of Saturn is the D ring followed by the C ring. Both are faint and contain no moons (that have been discovered to date). The B ring is the largest and brightest of Saturn's rings and contains several visible gaps. The Cassini Division is the large gap that separates the Saturn's B ring from its A ring.

The Encke Gap is located within the A ring, which contains the moon Pan. Wobbles in the A ring are caused by resonance disruptions from other orbiting moons. Recently, scientists have discovered that new ring material may be generated from Saturn's moons. Saturn's A ring also contains the small moon Daphnis. Several other small moonlets have been discovered in the A ring, detectable only by the visible, v-shaped disruptions they cause.

Saturn's F ring lies outside the A ring and contains the moons Prometheus and Pandora. Janus and Epimetheus are moons special enough to have their own ring designation. The particles in this ring are generated by meteoroids hitting the surface of these two moons.

The G ring is located between the F ring and the E ring. It is very faint and is acted upon by the orbit of Mimas (contained in the E ring)

Saturn's E ring is its wide, outermost ring filled with very fine particles that are thought to be generated by the moon Enceladus. Mimas, Tethys and Dione are the other moons contained within the E ring.

Rhea, Titan, Hyperion and Iapetus are Saturn's largest moons and orbit the planet outside the E ring.

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Reading something like this makes me hopeful that we're no longer in the infant stage of our understanding of our solar system: we've been patient and observant while growing in our knowledge. Scientists have discovered a wave pattern, or oscillation, in Saturn's atmosphere only visible from Earth every 15 years. This discovery was made only because we've been studying Saturn from ground based telescopes for about 22 years. Combined with the Cassini spacecraft's observations of temperature changes in the giant planet's atmosphere over time, we're gaining a better understanding of Saturn and discovering not only how unique it is, but also that Saturn has something in common with Earth. Our own planet has these oscillations too, and so does Jupiter. "You could only make this discovery by observing Saturn over a long period of time," said Glenn Orton, of JPL, lead author of the ground-based study. "It's like putting together 22 years worth of puzzle pieces, collected by a hugely rewarding collaboration of students and scientists from around the world on various telescopes."
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Cassini scientists know for sure their spacecraft isn’t in Kansas anymore. Cassini’s been keeping an eye on a powerful electrical storm that’s been raging on Saturn for five months now, with lightning bolts 10,000 times more powerful than those found on Earth. But Cassini has also been busy flying by moons like Enceladus and Titan during this time, and therefore can’t constantly watch the storm. So amateur astronomers have been assisting the Cassini science team by monitoring this tempest in the “Storm Alley” region of Saturn. It’s no Great Red Spot, but it's the longest lasting electrical storm ever detected in our solar system.
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During a flyby of the small moon on March 12th, the Cassini probe detected significant amounts of organic chemicals as it flew through powerful geyser-like jets of ice blasting into space. This active moon appears to be generating organic chemicals much like the substances found in comets. As Cassini bravely travelled through the plume at a speed of 32,000 mph, it was able to take some indirect measurements of the density of the gas from the surprising amount of torque applied to spacecraft. Fortunately the craft was undamaged as the particles bounced off its bodywork…
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Astronomers have noticed a change on Saturn. The planet's rings are getting thinner and thinner and the details in the dark bands are getting harder to observe. What's more, at this rate, Saturn's rings will have completely vanished by Sept. 4, 2009!

But don't pack up your telescopes quite yet, there's no reason to be alarmed. This phenomenon occurs every 14 to 15 years and the explanation is down to an astronomical optical illusion called "ring plane crossing"…
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The Cassini spacecraft’s audacious flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus on March 12 has provided scientists more information about the geyser-like jets of ice shooting from the moon’s southern hemisphere. It also highlighted the drastic geologic differences between the moon’s north and south pole. While the data collected from the geysers is still being analyzed, images from the flyby showed a north polar region that is older and pitted with fractured craters, compared to the relatively newer cracks in south pole area from which water jets are emanating. The spacecraft came within 50 kilometers (30 miles) of the surface at closest approach and 200 kilometers (120 miles) while flying through the plume.
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Mark your calendars, this is going to be an amazing ride. NASA's Cassini spacecraft is going to make a flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus on Wednesday, March 12, 2008. And this time, the spacecraft is going to fly right through the mysterious geysers of water ice blasting out of the moon's Southern pole. At its closest approach, Cassini is going to get within 50 km (30 miles) of the surface. Now that's close!
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