Have a look at an image Cassini acquired on July 25 of this year during its T-121 flyby of Titan. Here we're dealing with a synthetic-aperture radar image, but one that has been cleaned up with a 'denoising' algorithm that produces clearer views. Because of its proximity to the Xanadu region, the mountainous terrain shown here has been named the 'Xanadu annex' by Cassini controllers. Both features block the formation of sand dunes, which are elsewhere ubiquitous around Titan's equator. As on Earth, Titan's dunes flow around the obstacles they meet. These are the first Cassini images of the Xanadu annex, which is now revealed to be made up of the same mountainous terrain seen in Xanadu itself. Referring to the first detection of Xanadu, which occurred in 1994 through Hubble Space Telescope observations, JPL's Mike Janssen, a member of the Cassini radar team, calls the annex 'an interesting puzzle,' adding: "This 'annex' looks quite similar to Xanadu using our radar, but there seems to...

Since I've just finished reading Stephen Baxter and Alastair Reynolds' The Medusa Chronicles, a great deal of the action of which takes place beneath the upper clouds of Jupiter, I'm finding the Juno mission more than a little fascinating. The novel shows us a Jupiter that is the habitat of a variety of dirigible-like lifeforms, along with the predators that make their life difficult, and a mysterious world far beneath that I won't spoil for you by describing. Juno is delving into mysteries of its own. The spacecraft's first images of Jupiter's north pole, taken on August 27, mark the first of 36 close passes that will define the mission. As is so often the case with first-time planetary discovery, we are seeing things we didn't expect. Scott Bolton (SwRI) is Juno principal investigator: "First glimpse of Jupiter's north pole, and it looks like nothing we have seen or imagined before. It's bluer in color up there than other parts of the planet, and there are a lot of storms. There is...

We’ve all come to terms with the fact that beyond the orbit of Neptune there exists a large number of objects. These trans-Neptunian objects (TNOs) substantially altered the almost sedate view of the Solar System that prevailed in the first half of the 20th Century, showing us that far from being a tame and orderly place of planets, asteroids and comets, we were in a system filled with material left over the the system’s formation. Tame and orderly became ragged and unkempt, and it was clear that the outer system was a place ripe for discovery. Pluto was the first TNO to be discovered, all the way back in 1930, but the modern era of trans-Neptunian objects began in 1992 with the discovery of (15760) 1992 QB, and we can now count over 1750 TNOs, as listed by the Minor Planet Center. Bear in mind that we can divide the entire space occupied by TNOs into several prominent divisions: the Kuiper Belt, the Oort Cloud, and the scattered disk, with a few outliers like Sedna causing...

It was in 2012 that Cassini data showed us the presence of the river system now called Vid Flumina, which empties into Titan's Ligeia Mare after a journey of more than 400 kilometers. Given surface temperatures on this largest of Saturn's moons, researchers assumed liquid methane would be the key player here. The question was whether the river -- and the eight canyons that branched off from it along its course -- were still filled with liquid or long dry. Now we have the answer, thanks to new work from Valerio Poggiali (La Sapienza University, Rome) and colleagues. Using radar signals bounced off Titan's surface in May of 2013, the researchers probed the deep gorges near Titan's north pole and were able to distinguish rocky material from smooth liquid. We're clearly looking at a surface that is actively eroding, one with striking comparisons to the landscapes of Utah and Arizona as well as the Nile River gorge. Key to the work here is the use of Cassini's radar as an altimeter,...

I suspect most scientists would like to have a moment like the one Stanton Peale, Patrick Cassen and Ray Reynolds experienced when Voyager flew past Io in 1979. How many of us get to see a major idea vindicated in such short order? It was on March 5 that Voyager 1 passed within 22,000 kilometers of Io. A scant three days before, Peale, Cassen and Reynolds had published their prediction that tidal forces should keep the moon's interior roiling, resulting in volcanic activity. Linda Morabito, on the Voyager navigation team, analyzed Voyager imagery shortly thereafter to discover that volcanoes were indeed active on the surface. What a triumph for the power of thorough analysis and prediction. Voyager, in fact, found nine plumes on Io, while demonstrating that its surface was dominated by sulfur and sulfur dioxide frost, with extensive lava fields extending for hundred of kilometers. The moon was also observed to have a thin atmosphere consisting primarily of sulfur dioxide. That thin...