![]() Iapetus is two-faced, with an icy half and a dark half coated with material coming from the comet-like moon Phoebe. Hyperion looks like a giant sponge or coral reef. Dione and Rhea are cratered snowball worlds with rocky cores. Some of Saturn’s smaller moons are among the most photogenic in our solar system. It too may have a subsurface ocean, though material from the ocean does not appear to leak up to the surface. Mimas boasts a massive crater that makes it eerily similar to the Death Star from Star Wars. ![]() The ocean contains complex organic materials. Via geysers on the surface to form one of Saturn’s outer rings. Secret under its icy crust: a saltwater ocean, which leaks into space EnceladusĪt just 500 kilometers (310 miles) wide, Enceladus could fitĬomfortably inside the U.S. A liquid-water ocean probably exists beneath the surface, though we don’t know if the chemical mix is conducive to life, or if there’s an energy source like the hydrothermal vents in Earth’s oceans. The surface is strikingly similar to Earth, with some key differences: Titan has mountains and dunes made of mostly ice rather than rock, and rivers, lakes and seas filled with methane and ethane instead of liquid water. Studying Titan, we can learn the possible starting ingredients for life Life as we know it - form Titan’s atmosphere and rain from the skies. Complex, organic molecules - one of the building blocks for Probably similar to Earth’s before life arose here around 3.5 billion Larger than Mercury, Titan has an orange, hazy atmosphere that was ![]() In addition to boasting an impressive ring system, Saturn has at least 83 moons, the largest of which are active, planet-like worlds. Our other three outer planets, Saturn is a solar system unto itself, with The other giant planets - Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune - each have their own ring systems, though none rival the grandeur of Saturn's. Will disappear completely within 300 million years. The rings are gradually being pulled into Saturn and Too close to Saturn and was ripped apart due to intense gravitationalįorces or that the rings are leftover material from when Saturn formed. Scientists think Saturn’s rings formed when either a large moon got The largest chunks, knownĪs moonlets, have enough gravity to clear small gaps, distort the rings’ shape, and cause wave-like disturbances. Size from dust specks to houses to mountains. Saturn’s rings are made from chunks of mostly water ice ranging in One exoplanet we’ve found appears to have rings 200 times wider than Saturn’s! We learn how solar systems evolve by studying Saturn and comparing it to similar exoplanets. Supporting the idea that our own gas giants moved during the solar Many are Jupiter and Saturn-like words close to their stars, Orbiting other stars - and the statistics show that most stars have We know of more than 5,000 exoplanets - worlds The Solar System, some of which slammed into early Earth and may have Their gravity likely lofted asteroids and comets all over The Sun and then migrated to their current positions about 4 billion Saturn was born right after Jupiter, roughly 4.5 billion years ago in Saturn’s rings and larger moons are visible even from small backyard telescopes. Jupiter, Saturn shares many of its attributes: a strong magnetic field generated by churning metallic hydrogen deep inside, raging storms in its gaseous upper atmosphere, and a diversity of planet-like moons that are worlds unto themselves. The real Lord of the Rings is Saturn, a massive outer planet boasting a set of rings about 27 Earths wide. 15, Cassini will plunge into the planet's thick atmosphere in a death dive designed to ensure that the spacecraft doesn't contaminate Enceladus or Titan (both of which may be capable of supporting life) with microbes from Earth.įollow Mike Wall on Twitter and Google+. Later this month, the probe, which is low on fuel, will begin the "grand finale" phase of its mission - a series of 22 orbits that will take it between Saturn's cloud tops and the edge of the innermost ring. (Huygens was a piggyback lander that touched down on the surface of the huge Saturn moon Titan in January 2005.)īut the Cassini orbiter's work is nearly done. The $3.2 billion Cassini-Huygens mission - a joint effort of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency - launched in October 1997 and arrived at Saturn in July 2004. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute) Saturn's moon Atlas hangs in the void in this image taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on April 12, 2017.
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