Astronomy, features and articles | Educational Science

Jun 22, 2014

Mysterious 'Magic Island' Unveiled as Saturn's Moon Warms

Scientists are as giddy as an enchanted snowman, as summer solstice approaches on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. With more sunlight shining on the moon's northern hemisphere, Titan is revealing new secrets, such as a mysterious bright object that researchers have dubbed the magic island. The bright spot, in the hydrocarbon...

Sep 30, 2014

Weird 'Island' on Saturn Moon Titan Puzzles Scientists (Video, Photos)

Saturn's huge moon Titan just got a little more mysterious. NASA's Cassini spacecraft has spotted an odd islandlike feature in Ligeia Mare, one of Titan's largest hydrocarbon seas. Scientists don't know what to make of the feature, which has apparently doubled in size over the past year or so, from...

Jun 10, 2015

Biggest Ring Around Saturn Just Got Supersized

A giant ring around Saturn is even larger than thought, spanning an area of space nearly 7,000 times larger than Saturn itself, researchers say. We knew it was the biggest ring, but now we find it's even bigger than we thought, new and improved, the study's lead author, Douglas Hamilton,...

Jun 19, 2015

Saturn's Moon Titan Has Polar Winds, Just Like Earth

In our solar system, the objects with rainfall, rivers and oceans can be counted on two fingers: Earth, and Saturn's moon Titan. Both also share a thick atmosphere, rocky ground and plate tectonics, and now, they have one more thing in common: polar wind that pulls gases from their atmospheres...

Jul 28, 2015

Giant Crater on Saturn Moon Tethys Dazzles in Spectacular Photo

A huge impact crater shines brightly on Saturn's icy moon Tethys in a gorgeous new photo taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The image highlights an impact basin on Tethys called Odysseus, which, at 280 miles (450 kilometers) across, is nearly half as wide as the Saturn moon itself. (The diameter...

Sep 17, 2015

An Ocean Flows Under Saturn's Icy Moon Enceladus

Saturn's moon Enceladus is an active water world with a global body of water sloshing around deep below its icy crust, scientists have confirmed. Gorgeous geysers of water have been observed erupting from Enceladus' surface, providing direct evidence of a reservoir of the life-giving liquid below the surface. But scientists...

Sep 23, 2015

Bizarre Giant Hexagon on Saturn May Finally Be Explained

The huge, mysterious hexagon at Saturn's north pole may finally have an explanation. The bizarre hexagonal cloud pattern was first discovered in 1988 by scientists reviewing data from NASA's Voyager flybys of Saturn in 1980 and 1981, but its existence was not confirmed until NASA's Cassini spacecraft observed the ringed...

Apr 5, 2016

Is Mysterious 'Planet Nine' Tugging on NASA Saturn Probe?

The hunt is on to find Planet Nine — a large undiscovered world, perhaps 10 times as massive as Earth and four times its size — that scientists think could be lurking in the outer solar system. After Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown, two planetary scientists from the California Institute...

Jun 29, 2016

Saturn Moon Enceladus' Plumes May Resemble Earth's 'Lost City'

Saturn's intriguing moon Enceladus could resemble Earth's Lost City, a network of hydrothermal vents in the Atlantic Ocean where life survives despite cold and darkness. Earth is the only planet in the solar system with liquid water on its surface, but many of the solar system's moons and dwarf planets...

Sep 20, 2016

Moon Speck Captured in Stunning View of Saturn's Rings

A speck of a moon makes big waves in a new image of Saturn's rings taken by the Cassini spacecraft. Captured July 2, 2016, the image shows Saturn's moon Pan inside the Encke gap, a 200-mile-wide (325 kilometers) space held open by the moon's orbit. Because the gravitational forces of...

Nov 18, 2016

Bizarre Hexagon on Saturn Shines in Spectacular NASA Photo

A stunning new photo of Saturn's north pole spotlights the planet's bizarre hexagon-shaped vortex and beautiful bands of swirling winds. NASA's Cassini spacecraft captured this dramatic view on Sept. 5, as the probe flew 890,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) above the planet. The image, which NASA released Monday (Nov. 14),...

Dec 29, 2016

Weird Clouds Linger on Saturn's Moon Titan

Mysterious, thin, wispy clouds hide under the hazy upper atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. NASA's Cassini spacecraft flew over Titan on June 7 and July 25 and captured strikingly different photos of the moon's high northern latitude using the probe's Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) and Visual and Infrared Mapping...

Jan 20, 2017

Cassini Gets Up Close and Personal With Saturn's 'Wavemaker' Moon Daphnis

Cassini's daring ring-skimming orbits of Saturn are already paying off, producing some beautiful and awe-inspiring views that have, until now, been too far away to see. But now, as this almost surreal observation of Saturn's tiny moon Daphnis shows, we're finally getting a really good look at the small-scale processes...

Feb 12, 2017

Put a Ring on It! Saturn Impresses in Stunning Valentine's Day Photos

NASA's Cassini spacecraft sends its love this Valentine's Day with photos of Saturn's beautiful rings, moons and polar vortex. The Cassini-Huygens mission — a joint collaboration led by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency — launched in 1997 and is in its final year in orbit...

Apr 13, 2017

Potential Energy Source for Life Spotted on Saturn Moon Enceladus

Saturn's icy moon Enceladus is looking more and more like a habitable world. The same sorts of chemical reactions that sustain life near deep-sea hydrothermal vents here on Earth could potentially be occurring within Enceladus' subsurface ocean, a new study published today (April 13) in the journal Science suggests. These...