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Saturn's rings are made up of billions of chunks of ice and rock ... About two tons of Saturn’s mass came from Earth—the Cassini spacecraft was intentionally vaporized in Saturn’s atmosphere ...
The Atmospheric Structure Instrument (ASI) would provide the pressure and temperature profile of Saturn's atmosphere to determine the altitude profile of static stability, and when combined with cloud measurements from the nephelometer, it would elucidate processes that determine the location and structure of Saturn's multiple cloud layers.
Saturn's atmosphere exhibits a banded pattern similar to Jupiter's, but Saturn's bands are much fainter and are much wider near the equator. The nomenclature used to describe these bands is the same as on Jupiter. Saturn's finer cloud patterns were not observed until the flybys of the Voyager spacecraft during the 1980s.
Saturn's atmosphere has several unusual features. Its winds are among the Solar System's fastest, with Voyager data indicating peak easterly winds of 500 m/s. It is also the only planet with a warm polar vortex, and is the only planet other than Earth where eyewall clouds have been observed in hurricane -like structures.
Scientists finally have a comprehensive view of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. A team of astronomers has created the first global map of Titan by using the Cassini probe's over 100 fly-bys to ...
Titan orbits Saturn at 20 Saturn radii or 1,200,000 km above Saturn's apparent surface. From Titan's surface, Saturn subtends an arc of 5.09 degrees, and if it were visible through the moon's thick atmosphere, it would appear 11.4 times larger in the sky, in diameter, than the Moon from Earth, which subtends 0.48° of arc.
NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which explored Saturn and its icy moons, including the majestic Titan, ended its mission with a death plunge into the giant ringed planet in 2017. Cassini's radar ...
One hypothesis, developed at Oxford University, is that the hexagon forms where there is a steep latitudinal gradient in the speed of the atmospheric winds in Saturn's atmosphere. [22] Similar regular shapes were created in the laboratory when a circular tank of liquid was rotated at different speeds at its centre and periphery.