Blogs
Blog Archive
Europe Will Select Its Next Major Science Mission in November
Posted by Van Kane on 2013/09/25 01:22 CDT | 2 comments
The European Space Agency will announce two major science missions this November, one of which is likely to be devoted to solar system exploration.
Posted by Sarah Hörst on 2013/08/26 03:14 CDT | 11 comments
By now I hope that everyone has seen some of the spectacular images of the Saturn system (and especially Titan!) from the Cassini-Huygens mission. However, the measurements that often make my heart race are taken by instruments that reveal Titan in ways that our eyes cannot see.
Pretty picture: spectacular Saturn and Titan
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/08/15 08:04 CDT | 3 comments
A lovely view of the ringed planet and its hazy moon seen from nearly behind them just a few days ago.
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/07/29 01:18 CDT | 4 comments
Pushing back the frontier, and filling in the blank spaces on the map.
Jani Radebaugh, Titan Explorer
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/07/23 03:47 CDT | 4 comments
Robotic space exploration is human exploration. Meet one of the people behind the machines.
Posted by Ralph Lorenz on 2013/07/17 01:13 CDT
The fictional world Tatooine, scene of action in the Star Wars movies, is named after a town in Tunisia, where parts of the movies were filmed. The desert backdrops against which the movies were filmed are real terrestrial landscapes, which prove to be perhaps unexpectedly dynamic.
Scale comparisons of the solar system's major moons
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/07/10 06:05 CDT | 12 comments
A few presentation slides with pretty pictures, sized to scale, of the large moons of the solar system.
Posted by Jim Bell on 2013/06/03 03:53 CDT | 6 comments
I'm absolutely floored when I stop to think that our beautiful blue ocean is only one of perhaps a half dozen or more oceans on other worlds in our solar system, and only one of probably millions (or more) oceans on other Earth-like planets in our galaxy. Oceans abound!
The Shores of the Kraken Sea: Great Place Names in the Solar System
Posted by Bill Dunford on 2013/05/28 08:59 CDT | 9 comments
Nothing reflects the romance of deep space exploration more than the evocative names of places on the planets and moons.
Posted by Sarah Hörst on 2013/05/15 11:55 CDT | 12 comments
A tale from the scientific trenches: laboratory work to simulate Titan's rich atmosphere.
Meteor showers on Titan: an example of why Twitter is awesome for scientists and the public
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2013/03/06 12:48 CST | 5 comments
I use a variety of social networking tools to perform my job, but there's one that's more important and valuable to me than all the rest combined: Twitter. Yesterday afternoon there was a discussion on Twitter that exemplifies its value and fun: are there visible meteors on Titan?
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/12/19 10:06 CST | 3 comments
Join us for our weekly Google+ Hangout Thursday at noon PT / 2000 UT. This week, I'm excited to have as a guest Sarah Hörst. Sarah is a postdoc at the University of Colorado whose current line of research involves experimental work on the complex atmospheric chemistry of Titan. She is also applying to be an astronaut!
Watching the slow shift of seasons on Titan
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/11/06 02:45 CST | 1 comments
A sharp-eyed amateur noticed two images of Titan taken 20 months apart from nearly exactly the same perspective, and they illustrate how the shifting of Saturn's seasons has brought change to Titan's atmosphere.
DPS 2012, Tuesday: Titan's surface
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/10/17 10:22 CDT | 4 comments
Tuesday morning at the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting featured talks on the surface composition and landforms on Titan, including lakes and "hot cross buns."
A couple of gems from the archives
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/09/10 11:07 CDT | 2 comments
We're still working on migrating content from the old to the new website. This week, that means I am looking, one by one, through some great amateur-processed space images.
Pretty picture: Halo on a halo?
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/06/15 05:21 CDT | 6 comments
An interesting set of images of Titan that Cassini took recently shows a peculiar cap at Titan's south pole.
Titan, Dead or Alive? A Debate
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/05/02 10:32 CDT
A lively discussion and debate between planetary polymaths Ralph Lorenz and Jeffrey Moore about Titan, hosted by the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, moderated by David Grinspoon.
Notes from the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference: Making Cassini's radar images prettier
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/03/26 02:12 CDT
One of the more exciting talks last week was given by Antoine Lucas about his work with Oded Aharonson "denoising" Cassini radar images of Titan. Cassini's radar images are superior to the camera photos in revealing fine details and topography on Titan's surface, but they do suffer from a random noise component that makes the pictures look snowy. Antoine and Oded have developed a method for removing much of this noise.
Notes from Titan talks at the 2012 Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC)
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/03/20 02:16 CDT
One of the topics I found most exciting yesterday was a series of talks on Titan's climate. Bob West showed how Titan's detached haze has shifted with time. Zibi Turtle presented about how Titan's weather has changed with these seasonal changes. Jason Barnes followed up Zibi's talk -- which was based on Cassini camera images -- with a study of the same regions using data from Cassini's imaging spectrometer, trying to figure out what was going on with that brightening. Ralph Lorenz talked about rainfall rates on Titan. Jeff Moore asked: what if Titan hasn't always had a thick atmosphere?
Parallel planetary processes create semantic headaches
Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/01/26 03:55 CST
I ran into a semantic problem today: what to call the science of studying liquids on Titan?
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