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Feast your eyes on one of the most puzzling planetary mysteries our solar system has to offer. In this photograph of Saturn's north pole, captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in 2009, clouds can be seen encircling the planet at about 77 degrees north latitude. Even at such a high parallel, the massive six-sided jet stream has a diameter more than twice that of Earth's. More »
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More than 60 moons are known to orbit Saturn, but few of them are as visually striking as Iapetus. Named formally after the Greek mythological Titan, Iapetus is sometimes referred to as the "painted," or "yin-yang" moon, due to puzzling variations in its surface composition. More »
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Using light-curve analysis astronomers have found a strange, dust-ringed object orbiting a distant star. They all agree it's like a 'Saturn on steroids,' but what actually is rolling around inside those dust rings? More »
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The wide angle camera onboard NASA's Cassini orbiter has been capturing incredible shots of Saturn and its various moons for years, and if this photo is any indication, it has no intentions of letting up. More »
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This striking image from the Cassini orbiter shows Saturn's northern hemisphere engulfed in a massive storm that has raged for well over a year. This storm was bigger than Earth when it began, and it's since gotten even more massive. More »
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Artist Andy Gracie is attempting to breed a strain of fruit fly that could survive on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. The first stage of his work, The Quest for Drosophila Titanus, is part of an exhibition currently touring the UK. More »
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The Cassini mission to Saturn has been bountiful with the gorgeous pictures in the past — including one gorgeous shot that wound up in the last Star Trek movie. But these newly released images of Titan might be the most arresting Cassini pictures yet. More »
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How about this — I'll tell you a couple of things that it isn't. It's not an iridescent oil slick, and it's not the interference patterns of a soap film. But you knew that already, didn't you? After all, this post is tagged as space porn. More »
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Back in the Forties, the science fiction rag Planet Comics published the ongoing feature "Life On Other Worlds." This section peppered scientific know-how amongst whatever gonzo shit the writer happened to make up. Here's a tour of our Solar System using old issues of Planet Comics. Did you know that Mars is occupied by gargantuan Romans?

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Call it moonception, if you'd like. Astronomers say that a moon-with-a-moon scenario could explain some of the strange features of Iapetus, the third-largest of Saturn's 62-known moons. More »
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The latest awesome image from the Cassini orbiter gives us an unusually rotated view of the rings around Saturn. They essential form the largest sundial in the known universe, revealing Saturn's seasons, just like Earth sundials tell the time. More »
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If you're tired of skiing on Earth, there's some perfect powder waiting for you, just 800 billion miles away. It's all thanks to Enceladus's amazing water geysers, some of which rain back down on the moon's surface as snow. More »
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This solar system just doesn't work. According to a new computer simulation, the planets could never have come together in their current configuration. The only explanation is that we once had a fifth gas giant...and it's still out there somewhere. More »
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Sometimes, things just line up perfectly. Like in this amazing photo of five of Saturn's moons together. This is no composite, this is one photo with five moons in view. You can't actually see Saturn itself, just the planet's rings. More »
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This image looks like it can't possibly be real, but it is. Taken back in 2006 when the Cassini spacecraft was orbiting the sixth planet, this photo captures a nighttime view of Saturn as light sparkles off of its rings. More »
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It's pretty hard not to notice the gigantic looming arrow in this picture of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. The striking, chevron-shaped formation is roughly the size of Texas. And while it may look like an enormous HUMANS, LOOK HERE sign, recently published research by NASA scientists suggests that it's actually a gigantic storm making its way across the moon's equatorial region. More »
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Trojan asteroids are objects that share a planet's orbit around the Sun but reside in what are basically gravitational dead zones. We've discovered Earth's first Trojan asteroid...but how did it get there, and why have we only just found it? More »
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The small moon Enceladus is constantly shooting water vapor out of its geysers. But that water isn't staying on the satellite - it's actually making its way to Saturn, making Enceladus the first known moon to shape its planet's composition. More »
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Last week saw Neptune Day, the first anniversary - in Neptune years - of the planet's discovery on September 23, 1846. That got us thinking: what are the "birthdays" for all the other planets? Here's a handy, mildly insane guide. More »
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Check out the most intense Saturn storm that the Cassini spacecraft has ever recorded. You can see it overtaking its own tail as it zooms around Saturn's Northern hemisphere. (The tail is the blue clouds to the South and West.) More »
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Last year, Saturn's ordinarily serene surface was torn apart by a storm that grew within a month to cover an entire hemisphere with howling winds, enormous "beacons" of infrared light, and even icier cold than usual. Now scientists take us inside that storm for the first time, using satellite images. More »
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We know that Saturn's moon Titan is home to everything from ice volcanoes to methane lakes to possibly even very simple forms of life. But its biggest secret is still hidden from sight: a giant subterranean ocean, possibly of water. More »
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The so-called "serpent storm" that is raging in Saturn's northern hemisphere is so bright and so massive that we here on Earth can easily see it from almost a billion miles away, as this recent photo dramatically reveals. More »
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Titan's thick atmosphere, sand dunes, and methane lakes make it a world whose geography could be very Earthlike - albeit cold and poisonous. And now astronomers believe this moon of Saturn has seasonal rainstorms and flooding, too. Here's the evidence. More »
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Of all the hundreds of moons in the solar system, none are weirder than Saturn's satellite Iapetus. We've already talked about its walnut-shaped ridge, but that's nothing compared to the weird optical illusion that lets it disappear from our telescopes. More »
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Saturn's rings are one of the solar system's most brilliant sights, extending for tens of thousands of kilometers and weighing at least thirty quadrillion tons. But in this amazing photograph, you can see just how thin the rings really are. More »
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Enceladus is home to one of the solar system's most incredible hotspots, churning out 15.8 gigawatts of power. It's even more proof that there's a liquid ocean hiding beneath the ice...but scientists have no clue what's creating all that heat. More »
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NASA's Messenger probe is currently orbiting close around the Sun in preparation for its mission to Mercury. While making its lonely orbit, Messenger snapped this amazing photo that shows all the planets (plus our Moon) in one big family photo. More »
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Just as the Northeast recovers from its major blizzard, Saturn has to upstage the whole thing with the reemergence of the Great White Spot, a massive storm system in the planet's southern hemisphere that can be several thousand kilometers across. More »
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Saturn's moon Iapetus has a gigantic ridge running along its equator that's twice the height of Mount Everest and covers 75% of the moon's equator. And its existence points to something stranger still: Iapetus once had its very own moon. More »
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Saturn's rings are among the most iconic sights in the solar system, but where did they come from? Long ago, an icy moon was ripped apart by Saturn's gravity, creating rings once a 100 times bigger than they are now. More »
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The Cassini orbiter mission has revealed some absolutely stunning pictures of Saturn and its moons, and now it's branching into video as well. Here's color video of Hyperion, a very strange moon located 800 million miles from Earth. More »
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Saturn's icy moon Rhea has an oxygen and carbon dioxide atmosphere that is very similar to Earth's. Even better, the carbon dioxide suggests there's life - and that possibly humans could breathe the air. More »
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Two naturalists explore the icy frontier on Saturn's inner moon Prometheus, as the ringed gas giant rises in the sky. More »
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The great challenge for any climber is to conquer each continent's tallest mountain. But tomorrow's climbers can consider a far more extreme challenge: leaving Earth to climb the tallest peaks of the solar system. Here's how they'll do it. More »
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The universe has so many dazzling sights that it seems silly to waste time on optical illusions. But some are just too amazing to ignore, like this shot of Saturn's moons Dione and Rhea seemingly morphing together into one mega-moon. More »
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Saturn's polar regions are home to brilliant auroras created by the collisions of charged particles above its magnetic fields, just like on Earth. And now you can see Saturn's southern lights in all their infrared glory. More »
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A Sun-like star is home to two huge planets both about the size of Saturn. This pair of planets are locked in orbital resonance, with one planet taking almost exactly twice as long to orbit the star as the other. More »
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Jupiter became the solar system's biggest planet by consuming its chief rival, a massive rocky planet ten times bigger than Earth. New discoveries suggest Jupiter and Saturn learned a lesson from their mythological namesakes, "eating" any planet that opposed them. More »
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This tiny little fellow is Daphnis, a moon that's just five miles wide and located inside a small gap in Saturn's rings. This image is the clearest shot yet of Daphnis and the warping effects it's having on the rings. More »
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