Tag Archives: saturn

Saturn’s Rings

In the outer solar system, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune all have rings, but Saturn’s are by far the largest and most spectacular. Galileo was the first to discover them in 1610, but for years they remained a mystery and much is still unknown about them. In the 1980s, the Voyager missions got a closer […] Continue reading

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Rings and Diamonds? A Girl’s Best Friend!

  On Jupiter and Saturn, scientists have recently discovered that there could be a lot of carbon on the planet.  This carbon could be present in the form of diamonds that rain down from the sky.  While the diamonds eventually melt and don’t stay around for long, they can be as large as a centimeter […] Continue reading

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Impacts on Saturn and the Drake equation

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft recently observed meteors colliding with Saturn’s thin rings.  This marked the first direct evidence of small meteoroids breaking into streams of rubble and crashing into Saturn’s rings, although astronomers already expected this to be occurring regularly.  However, specific details of such impacts were merely speculation, much of which is cleared up via […] Continue reading

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The Complex Chemistry of Titan

A recent experiment by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory simulating Titan’s atmosphere has shown that there is some exciting chemistry going on not only in it’s upper atmosphere, but in the lower atmosphere too! Before this, scientists had assumed that as you got closer to the surface, the air became “dull and inert.” However, this team […] Continue reading

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Saturn’s Rings

     I think I speak for a lot of people (or maybe I don’t) but I honestly thought Saturn’s rings were legit rings, made up of a solid material that didn’t break and rotated around Saturn.   It is amazing … Continue reading Continue reading

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New Saturn Discoveries

As we’ve learned in class, Saturn is an interesting planet mostly for its “rings” made of many small rocks and particles.  Because Saturn is a Jovian planet and so far away, we are still trying to learn as much as we can about it. In fact, scientists have discovered new information about Saturn’s rings and […] Continue reading

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The Mystery of Saturn’s Moonlets

Research done by Loughborough University physicists has recently led to new a understanding  of the formation of moonlets (small natural satellites) in Saturn’s F Ring. Previously, it was believed that strong tidal forces from Saturn and its other rings and moons would keep the moonlets from clumping. They’ve now discovered the moon Prometheus has a […] Continue reading

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Solar System Website

This image comes from solarviews.com, a cool website that has lots of info on our Solar System. It has pages about each of the planets, their moons, asteroids and much more. It also has info about other things like exoplanets and the Oort Cloud, which is a spherical cloud that surrounds our Sun and extends […] Continue reading

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