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Cassini spies Titan’s tallest peaks

By convention, mountains on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, are named for mountains from Middle-earth, the fictional setting in fantasy novels by J.R.R. Tolkien. Unfortunately for “Lord of the Rings” fans, Titan’s highest peak is not Doom Mons, but a trio of ridges known as Mithrim Montes, where the tallest peak is 10,948 feet (3,337 metres) high.

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Cassini views Helorus in half-light

In this image from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft we see a crater duo on Saturn’s 698-mile-wide moon Dione. The upper of the pair, named Italus, is overprinted on a grouping of ancient troughs called Petelia Fossae. The lower crater, Caieta, sits atop a feature named Helorus Fossa. Fossae on Dione are believed to be tectonic features.

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Saturn’s rings: less than meets the eye?

You might think that, in the rings of Saturn, more opaque areas contain a greater concentration of material than places where the rings seem more transparent. But this intuition does not always apply, according to a recent study of the rings using data from NASA’s Cassini mission. The research also suggests that the planet’s brightest B ring could be a few hundred million years old instead of a few billion.

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Saturn’s moons Janus and Tethys

Janus and Tethys demonstrate the main difference between small moons and large ones; it’s all about their shape. Moons like Tethys are large enough that their own gravity is sufficient to overcome the material strength of the substances they are made of and mould them into spherical shapes, but small moons like Janus are not massive enough for their gravity to form them into a sphere.

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Cassini completes final close flyby of Saturn’s moon Enceladus

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has begun transmitting data and images from the mission’s 22nd and final close flyby of Saturn’s active moon Enceladus on Saturday, 19 December. Cassini has made so many breathtaking discoveries about this icy moon, its geologic activity and global ocean that lies beneath its icy crust, yet so much more remains to be done to determine if this tiny ocean world could harbour life.

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Enceladus: water world

This view of Saturn’s moon Enceladus above the planet’s ring plane was captured by the narrow-angle camera of NASA’s Cassini spacecraft at a distance of approximately 630,000 miles (1 million kilometres) from the tiny water world. Enceladus is subject to forces that heat a global ocean of liquid water under its icy surface, resulting in its famous south polar water jets which are just visible below the moon’s dark, southern limb.

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Cassini ready to dive deep into Saturn moon’s erupting water plume

On Wednesday, 28 October 2015, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will take the deepest dive ever through the plume of ice, water vapour and organic molecules spraying from the south polar region of Saturn’s moon Enceladus. Scientists hope this close flyby will shed light on what’s happening beneath the moon’s icy surface. With a global ocean and likely hydrothermal activity, could Enceladus have the ingredients needed to support simple forms of life?

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One of Saturn’s rings is not like the others

NASA’s Cassini mission scientists were watching closely when the Sun set on Saturn’s rings in August 2009. It was the equinox — one of two times in the Saturnian year when the Sun illuminates the planet’s enormous ring system edge-on — providing an extraordinary opportunity for the spacecraft to observe short-lived changes that reveal details about the nature of the rings.