Cassini Solstice Essay

Many scientists predict that for many years from now, most of Saturn's moon will be sucked in and be part of its ring. At one point in time there will be no moons for Saturn since they have just evaporated.. If this keeps happening, the moons of Saturn will disappear and turn into the planets ring. Let us move on to the next page of information about the different planets rings and how they got

Saturn is unique of all the planets, adorned with thousands of beautiful ringlets and has 63 moons with confirmed orbits. Fifty-three of the moons have been named, with Titan being the largest and the only one with an atmosphere. Saturn is mostly a massive ball of hydrogen and helium, much like the planet Jupiter.

On September 15, a satellite took its last rounds in space as it dived towards Saturn’s unforgiving atmosphere. The satellite, Cassini, had been in space for 20 years and had spent 13 years orbiting Saturn. It was launched 1997, traveling 7.9 billion kilometres, gathering 635 gigabytes of data, and about 450,000 pictures. Cassini’s last photographs taken of Saturn answered questions that couldn’t have been answered any other way. On Cassini’s last day, the satellite changed from a recording device to a transmitting probe, constantly sending data back to Earth. As soon as Cassini entered Saturn’s atmosphere, it tried to keep its antenna pointing towards Earth, still sending data until the force of the atmosphere won. According to scientists,

The moon is by far the biggest and most easily recognizable object in earth’s atmosphere that can be perceived by the naked eye on a cloudless night. It is hypothesized that it came into existence nearly 4.5 billion years ago, from residual debris after a planetary body collided with earth. Although, considered the runner-up to the sun as the second brightest object in the sky, its illumination is deceitful, insomuch as the moon is not a source of light, but instead reflects the sun’s illumination from the half of the moon that is in direct alignment with the sun at that time. More readily identified as a satellite of the earth rather than as a planet itself or even a star, it has a diameter a quarter of the size of earth’s size and it

No one could have imagined, back in the mid-sixties, that the exploration of the moons of Jupiter laid not in the next century but only fifteen years ahead. Nor had anyone dreamed of the wonders that would be found there - although we can be quite certain that the discoveries of the twin Voyagers will one day be surpassed by even more unexpected finds. When 2001 was written, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto were mere pinpoints of light in even the most

Scientists with NASA’s Cassini mission have been studying data imagery of the tiny moon Enceladus for the past seven years. Cassini is a spacecraft that first arrived at Saturn in 2004 and has been orbiting the planet ever since. Cassini first saw water vapor coming from the moon’s South Pole in 2005. In 2014, Scientists announced evidence for a regional sea on Enceladus. A few months ago, Cassini detected hydrothermal vents, indicating that the moon’s water is heated and has minerals, the basic

Since the emergence of the space race, exploring our solar system has been a top priority for many nations. Satellites have been sent out to orbit the earth, other planets, as well as their moon. However, only recently has the mystery of the icy dwarf planet Pluto been explored more in depth. New Horizons was a robotic mission launched from Cape Canaveral on January 16, 2006. Its primary mission was to perform a flyby near Pluto and its largest moon, Charon. Only in the summer of 2015 did New Horizons reach Pluto where it stayed for six months studying the icy dwarf as well as its largest moon. New Horizons has since moved on from Pluto, but its mission

Intriguing, extravagant, and extraordinary; these are all words that describe Saturn’s Hexagon. It’s first visitation was the Voyager mission from 1981-1982. Then, since 2006 onward, Cassini has taken informative photos of this amazing feature of Jupiter. It (Cassini) has taken infrared photos of this great phenomenon. Also, recently Cassini has been able to take photos thanks to the sunlight. The great process will yield intriguing data.

On a spring day in 1655, the Dutch astronomer Christian Huygens discovered, with his newly-built telescope, the biggest of Saturn's moons. Titan, as it was later named, orbits around Saturn in a distance from the Sun ten times greater than Earth's. Huygens probably expected a world similar to our own Moon. However, the Cassini–Huygens mission that arrived in 2004, paints a different picture. One that looks awfully familiar.

I once wanted to go into space. Little did I know, one day I wanted to visit Saturn’s moon, Enceladus. Enceladus has some features that may mean it can contain life. Enceladus would seem like the perfect place to visit. Who wouldn’t want to go see space, or find life in space?

“Furthermore, the icy rocks in the rings reflect the sunlight to produce the vivid colors. Saturn’s rings span two hundred and eighty-two kilometers, whereas Spes’ rings stretch a hundred and fifty thousand kilometers across. The immense size of these rings is primarily due to this planet’s relative youth of only three million years in contrast to Saturn’s age of four and a half billion years. Eventually, the icy rocks in outer rings of Spes will coalesce to form moons, similar to the fifty-three moons of Saturn. In other words, the ring system will slowly whittle away over the millennia, leaving only the inner bands. At present, Spes has a single moon on the periphery of the ring system. We can also see the three radiant suns in the

Saturn’s axis is titled 26.73 ° comparable to Earth’s 23.5 ° tilt, which gives Saturn seasons. Saturn rotates in the same direction as Earth, which is east to west. Its rotation is surprisingly fast, being equivalent to only 10.7 earth hours. This causes Saturn’s equatorial radius to be 10 percent wider than its polar radius. However, its orbit around the Sun is quite a bit slower. One full orbit takes 29 years for Saturn to complete. As for weather, Saturn averages a temperature of about -168 ° C with winds as fast as 1800 kilometers an hour in the upper atmosphere.

Since 2004, the Cassini spacecraft has returned to Earth a copious amount of data about the Saturnian system. In particular, its imaging system revealed the existence of several small satellites. There are papers \citep{Spitale.etal-2006,Cooper.etal-2008,Hedman.etal-2010a} showing that Mimas perturbs the orbits of some of these satellites by resonant

Saturn's moon Titan continues to baffle NASA scientists. Recently, a team found the formation of an ice cloud appearing out of thin air on Titan. This is similar to what we see over Earth's poles. However, there's minimal explanation to this event. While the agency scrambles around for answers, others look for signs of alien life on Titan.

Saturn is one of the most interesting planets in the solar system. It is the sixth planet in the solar system, and is most famous for its stunning array of rings. It is a very easy planet to pick out in the sky because it is one of the brightest lights in the shy. It also has a very faint greenish color that makes it stand out from the rest of the objects in the sky (“Astronomy for Kids”). Saturn is the second largest planet in the solar system, Jupiter being the only planet that is bigger. It also has at least eighteen moons, more than any other planet in the solar system. There have been three voyages to this extraordinary planet, and one is still in process today. The Pioneer II traveled to Saturn in September of 1979,