Saturn

It’s Raining Diamonds on Saturn and Jupiter

We’re a little late to the party on this one, but it’s just too fascinating to pass up. A team of planetary scientists recently claimed that the mix of methane, carbon and lightning in Saturn’s atmosphere is causing diamonds to be forged in the planet’s atmosphere. Like, a lot of diamonds. “The bottom line is…

Space & Spaceflight Adam Clark Estes Oct 14

Energetic Oil Paintings of Our Solar System’s Planets

Most of the space porn we come across is constructed from recorded images of objects in space. But painter Erik Olson prefers to interpret our solar system through his own lens, rendering our celestial neighbors with oil on canvas. Olson’s painting also step outside our solar system, with quasars, nebulae, and more. It’s interesting to…

io9 Lauren Davis Sep 29

Saturn Looks Simply Stunning From Cassini

Saturn’s never looked more majestic than in this beautiful high-resolution image captured recently by Cassini. Snapped using the satellite’s wide-angle camera on June 15, the picture shows the planet from 657,000 miles away and 17 degrees above the ringplane. Each pixel represents about 37 miles. But forget the technical detail: it just looks beautiful. [NASA]…

Space & Spaceflight Jamie Condliffe Sep 13

Humanity waves at Saturn as Cassini snaps historic pic

Late last month, the Cassini spacecraft captured a remarkable photograph of the Earth and Moon as seen from Saturn. The event coincided with a project called “The Day The Earth Smiled” in which participants from 40 countries took photos of themselves waving at the ringed planet. The results have now been assembled into this awesome…

io9 George Dvorsky Aug 22

Two Moons That Pass in the Night

This image shows the rare sight of Saturn’s moons Mimas and Pandora aligning in the night sky—and they couldn’t look more different. Seeing them both together makes you realise just how varied moons can be. Pandora, the smaller of the two—just 50 miles across—lacks the mass, and hence sufficient gravity, to pull itself into the…

Space & Spaceflight Jamie Condliffe Jul 31

Thousands of Images of Saturn Make For One Amazing Stop Motion Film

It took two decades of brilliant engineering to get the Cassini probe to Saturn, and the images this little ‘bot has sent back are the stuff of science fiction. But in the hands of filmmaker Fabio di Donato, they look more like a silent film from the 1920s. Donato culled thousands of highlights from the…

Space & Spaceflight Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan Jul 25

Don’t miss your chance to have your photo taken from outer space!

Earth has been photographed from space before, but its inhabitants have never been given advance notice as to when those photographs would be taken. Consider this your send-ahead: On July 19th, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will photograph Earth from a billion miles away. Say cheese. The photo-op was announced by planetary scientist Carolyn Porco, team lead…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 28

Can you guess the subject of this photograph?

Here’s a hint: it’s big, gassy, and rhymes with pattern. It’s Saturn! Kind of. Technically, it’s of Saturn’s D-ring, the innermost (and faintest) ring encircling our solar system’s second-largest planet. Via the Cassini mission’s image page: Saturn’s D ring may be faint and difficult to observe, but it rewards our patience. In this image, the…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Jun 11

What Life on Earth Would Look Like If Earth Had Rings Like Saturn

Every so often when the Moon is especially ginormous or we can see Venus or Mars from Earth, humans collectively freaks out. So cool three exclamation points, we scream. Look how big with thirty i’s, we yell. And it’s warranted! Seeing things that don’t belong in the sky pop up, well, in the sky is…

Tech News Casey Chan May 24

Feast your eyes on the first global topographical map of Titan

For the first time ever, planetary scientists have created a topographical map of Titan, the largest of Saturn’s many moons, and the second-largest in the entire solar system. The map is a boon to researchers who study Titan, a mysterious moon that is arguably the most Earth-like body in our solar system – and it’s…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez May 23

Cassini catches an awesome glimpse of Saturn’s north pole hurricane

This is our first close-up view of the massive hurricane swirling at the northern tip of Saturn, a storm that features winds travelling at a rate of 150 meters per second and an eye that’s 20 times larger than the average hurricane on Earth. The unprecedented high-resolution images were made possible for two reasons. First,…

io9 George Dvorsky Apr 30

Saturn’s Harrowing Hurricane Is Even More Terrifying in Technicolor

Not too long ago, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft managed to get some awesome photos of Saturn’s 1,250 mile-wide polar hurricane. It looked pretty intense in black and white, but this new colored version is one blood-red beauty. https://gizmodo.com/stare-into-the-eye-of-saturns-terrifying-polar-vortex-5963849 Cassini shot the picture with special spectral filters that can detect the subtleties of wavelengths of near-infrared light.…

Space & Spaceflight Eric Limer Apr 29

Saturn looks mighty fine in infrared

You might say it’s glowing, actually. This is the ringed planet as it appeared Tuesday morning through the eyes of the Keck Observatory’s infrared sensors. Perched high atop the summit of Hawai’i’s Mauna Kea, Keck’s two, ten-meter optical/infrared telescopes are the largest on Earth – perfect for picking up on the IR waves reflected off…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Apr 25

Alien life in our solar system, according to pulp-art legend Frank R. Paul

Almost fifty years after his death, Frank R. Paul remains one of the biggest names in science fiction art and pulp magazine illustration. These visions of life on moons and planets throughout our solar system (recently posted to reddit with no attribution to Paul, his work, or his impact) provide us with another fantastic example…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Apr 8

The Very First Close Encounter With Planet Saturn

Today’s Image of the Day on Nasa.gov presents us a nice big version of the first spaceborn portrait of Saturn. The image above was taken by the Pioneer 11 spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral forty years ago, on April 5, 1973. Pioneer 11’s path through Saturn’s outer rings took it within 21,000 km of the…

Tech News Attila Nagy Apr 5

Saturn’s Moon Enceladus, to Scale

When it comes to space, perspective is everything. We’ve talked about the importance of scale in the past – about how, when separated by millions of miles of space, many objects in our solar system can seem unrelatably gigantic. It’s what makes images like this one so eye-opening. https://gizmodo.com/and-now-for-a-sense-of-scale-a-map-of-the-u-s-overlai-5984252 Enceladus, the captivating cryovolcanic moon of…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Mar 27

Here’s what it looks like when meteors hit the rings of Saturn

Recently, the cameras on board the Cassini spacecraft caught images of meteors racing through the rings of Saturn. Or, rather, photos of the clouds of debris created as the meteors impacted the icy ring particles. These meteors were probably a lot smaller than the Chelyabinsk meteor—-let alone the monsters that rained onto Jupiter—-being perhaps only…

io9 Ron Miller Mar 6

Can You Find Venus Hiding Inside Saturn’s Rings?

If you’re looking at the picture above and now checking your screen to see if you have a dead pixel, don’t worry, you don’t. That’s just Venus hiding through Saturn’s rings. Taken by the Cassini, Earth’s twin planet looks like a blinding white speck of dust. NASA says the picture was captured approximately 498,000 miles…

Space & Spaceflight Casey Chan Mar 4

Here is a gorgeous view of Venus . . . from Saturn

Just released: two spellbinding images of Venus as photographed from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft (which, you’ll recall, is all the way out in the Saturnian system). You’ll want to check these out in hi-res, because good grief are they gorgeous. The images provide downright stunning proof that Venus, well known for shining brightly in our own…

io9 Robbie Gonzalez Mar 4

Two Distant Worlds: The Venus Shines Through The Rings Of Saturn

European Space Agency and NASA just released this stunning photo of our planetary neighbour made by Cassini last November when the spacecraft was placed in the shadow of Saturn. This allowed Cassini to look in the direction of the Sun and take a backlit image of the planet and its rings. That bright dot peeking…

Tech News Attila Nagy Mar 4

It’s Raining Diamonds on Saturn and Jupiter

Energetic Oil Paintings of Our Solar System’s Planets

Saturn Looks Simply Stunning From Cassini

Humanity waves at Saturn as Cassini snaps historic pic

Two Moons That Pass in the Night

Thousands of Images of Saturn Make For One Amazing Stop Motion Film

Don’t miss your chance to have your photo taken from outer space!

Can you guess the subject of this photograph?

What Life on Earth Would Look Like If Earth Had Rings Like Saturn

Feast your eyes on the first global topographical map of Titan

Cassini catches an awesome glimpse of Saturn’s north pole hurricane

Saturn’s Harrowing Hurricane Is Even More Terrifying in Technicolor

Saturn looks mighty fine in infrared

Alien life in our solar system, according to pulp-art legend Frank R. Paul

The Very First Close Encounter With Planet Saturn

Saturn’s Moon Enceladus, to Scale

Here’s what it looks like when meteors hit the rings of Saturn

Can You Find Venus Hiding Inside Saturn’s Rings?

Here is a gorgeous view of Venus . . . from Saturn

Two Distant Worlds: The Venus Shines Through The Rings Of Saturn

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