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Moons - Blog Posts
2025 Witches' Calendar
January 13 ● Full Moon in Cancer (Wolf Moon) January 29 ● New Moon in Aquarius February 2 ● Imbolc February 12 ● Full Moon in Leo (Snow Moon) February 27 ● New Moon in Pisces March 14 ● Full Moon in Virgo (Worm Moon) March 15-April 7 ● Mercury Retrograde March 20 ● Ostara March 29 ● New Moon in Aries April 12 ● Full Moon in Libra (Pink Moon) April 27 ● New Moon in Taurus May 1 ● Beltane May 12 ● Full Moon in Scorpio (Flower Moon) May 26 ● New Moon in Gemini June 11 ● Full Moon in Sagittarius (Strawberry Moon) June 20 ● Litha June 25 ● New Moon in Cancer July 10 ● Full Moon in Capricorn (Buck Moon) July 18-August 11 ● Mercury Retrograde July 24 ● New Moon in Leo August 1 ● Lammas August 9 ● Full Moon in Aquarius (Corn Moon) August 23 ● New Moon in Leo September 7 ● Full Moon in Pisces (Harvest Moon) September 21 ● New Moon in Virgo September 22 ● Mabon October 6 ● Full Moon in Aries (Hunter's Moon) October 21 ● New Moon in Libra October 31 ● Samhain November 5 ● Full Moon in Taurus (Beaver Moon) November 9-November 29 ● Mercury in Retrograde November 20 ● New Moon in Scorpio December 4 ● Full Moon in Gemini (Cold Moon) December 19 ● New Moon in Sagittarius December 21 ● Yule
Celestial Drop
A little mix of everything that is stars and moons!
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Look at me with a serious face and tell me that these don’t look delicious !
Just imagine if Nintendo made gummy’s of these things.
Celestial Mechanics Around the Solar System During December 2019
The dance of planets, moons and spacecraft around the solar system creates a host of rare alignments in late December 2019. Here's what's coming up.
Dec. 21: Winter solstice in the Northern Hemisphere
Dec. 21 is the 2019 winter solstice for the Northern Hemisphere. A solstice marks the point at which Earth's tilt is at the greatest angle to the plane of its orbit, also the point where half of the planet is receiving the longest stretch of daylight and the other the least. There are two solstices a year, in June and December: the summer and winter solstices, respectively, in the Northern Hemisphere.
The winter solstice is the longest night of the year, when that hemisphere of Earth is tilted farthest from the Sun and receives the fewest hours of sunlight in a given year. Starting Dec. 21, the days will get progressively longer until the June solstice for those in the Northern Hemisphere, and vice versa for the Southern Hemisphere.
Dec. 26: Annular solar eclipse visible in Asia
On Dec. 26, an annular solar eclipse will be visible in parts of Asia. During an annular eclipse, the Moon's apparent size is too small to completely cover the face of the Sun, creating a "ring of fire" around the Moon's edge during the eclipse.
Credit: Dale Cruikshank
Solar eclipses happen when the Moon lines up just right with the Sun and Earth. Though the Moon orbits Earth about once a month, the tilt in its orbit means that it's relatively rare for the Moon to pass right in line between the Sun and Earth — and those are the conditions that create an eclipse. Depending on the alignment, the Moon can create a partial, total or annular solar eclipse.
On Dec. 26, the Moon will be near perigee, the point in its orbit when it's farthest from Earth. That means its apparent size from Earth is just a bit smaller — and that difference means that it won't completely cover the Sun during the Dec. 26 eclipse. Instead, a ring of the bright solar surface will be visible around the Moon during the point of greatest eclipse. This is called an annular eclipse.
It is never safe to look directly at an annular solar eclipse, because part of the Sun is always visible. If you're in the path of the annular eclipse, be sure to use solar viewing glasses (not sunglasses) or another safe viewing method to watch the eclipse.
Dec. 26: Parker Solar Probe flies by Venus
After the eclipse, more than 100 million miles away from Earth, Parker Solar Probe will pull off a celestial maneuver of its own. On Dec. 26, the spacecraft will perform the second Venus gravity assist of the mission to tighten its orbit around the Sun.
During the seven gravity assists throughout the mission, Parker Solar Probe takes advantage of Venus's gravity to slow down just the right amount at just the right time. Losing some of its energy allows the spacecraft to be drawn closer by the Sun's gravity: It will fly by the Sun's surface at just 11.6 million miles during its next solar flyby on Jan. 29, 2020. During this flyby, Parker Solar Probe will break its own record for closest-ever spacecraft to the Sun and will gather new data to build on the science already being shared from the mission.
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Solar System: 10 Things to Know
Movie Night
Summer break is just around the corner. Hang a sheet from the clothesline in the backyard and fire up the projector for a NASA movie night.
1. Mars in a Minute
Back in the day, movies started with a cartoon. Learn the secrets of the Red Planet in these animated 60 second chunks.
2. Crash of the Titans
Watch two galaxies collide billions of years from now in this high-definition visualization.
3. Tour the Moon in 4K
Wait for the dark of the waning Moon next weekend to take in this 4K tour of our constant celestial companion.
4. Seven Years of the Sun
Watch graceful dances in the Sun’s atmosphere in this series of videos created by our 24/7 Sun-sentinel, the Solar Dynamic Observatory (SDO).
5. Light ‘Em Up
Crank up the volume and learn about NASA science for this short video about some of our science missions, featuring a track by Fall Out Boy.
6. Bennu’s Journey
Follow an asteroid from its humble origins to its upcoming encounter with our spacecraft in this stunning visualization.
7. Lunar Landing Practice
Join Apollo mission pilots as they fly—and even crash—during daring practice runs for landing on the Moon.
8. Earthrise
Join the crew of Apollo 8 as they become the first human beings to see the Earth rise over the surface of the Moon.
9. Musical Descent to Titan
Watch a musical, whimsical recreation of the 2005 Huygens probe descent to Titan, Saturn’s giant moon.
10. More Movies
Our Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio provides a steady stream of fresh videos for your summer viewing pleasure. Come back often and enjoy.
Read the full version of this article on the web HERE.
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Cassini Mission: What’s Next?
It’s Friday, Sept. 15 and our Cassini mission has officially come to a spectacular end. The final signal from the spacecraft was received here on Earth at 7:55 a.m. EDT after a fateful plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere.
After losing contact with Earth, the spacecraft burned up like a meteor, becoming part of the planet itself.
Although bittersweet, Cassini’s triumphant end is the culmination of a nearly 20-year mission that overflowed with discoveries.
But, what happens now?
Mission Team and Data
Now that the spacecraft is gone, most of the team’s engineers are migrating to other planetary missions, where they will continue to contribute to the work we’re doing to explore our solar system and beyond.
Mission scientists will keep working for the coming years to ensure that we fully understand all of the data acquired during the mission’s Grand Finale. They will carefully calibrate and study all of this data so that it can be entered into the Planetary Data System. From there, it will be accessible to future scientists for years to come.
Even beyond that, the science data will continue to be worked on for decades, possibly more, depending on the research grants that are acquired.
Other team members, some who have spent most of their career working on the Cassini mission, will use this as an opportunity to retire.
Future Missions
In revealing that Enceladus has essentially all the ingredients needed for life, the mission energized a pivot to the exploration of “ocean worlds” that has been sweeping planetary science over the past couple of decades.
Jupiter’s moon Europa has been a prime target for future exploration, and many lessons during Cassini’s mission are being applied in planning our Europa Clipper mission, planned for launch in the 2020s.
The mission will orbit the giant planet, Jupiter, using gravitational assists from large moons to maneuver the spacecraft into repeated close encounters, much as Cassini has used the gravity of Titan to continually shape the spacecraft’s course.
In addition, many engineers and scientists from Cassini are serving on the new Europa Clipper mission and helping to shape its science investigations. For example, several members of the Cassini Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer team are developing an extremely sensitive, next-generation version of their instrument for flight on Europa Clipper. What Cassini has learned about flying through the plume of material spraying from Enceladus will be invaluable to Europa Clipper, should plume activity be confirmed on Europa.
In the decades following Cassini, scientists hope to return to the Saturn system to follow up on the mission's many discoveries. Mission concepts under consideration include robotic explorers to drift on the methane seas of Titan and fly through the Enceladus plume to collect and analyze samples for signs of biology.
Atmospheric probes to all four of the outer planets have long been a priority for the science community, and the most recent recommendations from a group of planetary scientists shows interest in sending such a mission to Saturn. By directly sampling Saturn's upper atmosphere during its last orbits and final plunge, Cassini is laying the groundwork for an potential Saturn atmospheric probe.
A variety of potential mission concepts are discussed in a recently completed study — including orbiters, flybys and probes that would dive into Uranus' atmosphere to study its composition. Future missions to the ice giants might explore those worlds using an approach similar to Cassini's mission.
Learn more about the Cassini mission and its Grand Finale HERE.
Follow the mission on Facebook and Twitter for the latest updates.
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Cassini Spacecraft: Top Discoveries
Our Cassini spacecraft has been exploring Saturn, its stunning rings and its strange and beautiful moons for more than a decade.
Having expended almost every bit of the rocket propellant it carried to Saturn, operators are deliberately plunging Cassini into the planet to ensure Saturn’s moons will remain pristine for future exploration – in particular, the ice-covered, ocean-bearing moon Enceladus, but also Titan, with its intriguing pre-biotic chemistry.
Let’s take a look back at some of Cassini’s top discoveries:
Titan
Under its shroud of haze, Saturn’s planet-sized moon Titan hides dunes, mountains of water ice and rivers and seas of liquid methane. Of the hundreds of moons in our solar system, Titan is the only one with a dense atmosphere and large liquid reservoirs on its surface, making it in some ways more like a terrestrial planet.
Both Earth and Titan have nitrogen-dominated atmospheres – over 95% nitrogen in Titan’s case. However, unlike Earth, Titan has very little oxygen; the rest of the atmosphere is mostly methane and traced amounts of other gases, including ethane.
There are three large seas, all located close to the moon’s north pole, surrounded by numerous smaller lakes in the northern hemisphere. Just one large lake has been found in the southern hemisphere.
Enceladus
The moon Enceladus conceals a global ocean of salty liquid water beneath its icy surface. Some of that water even shoots out into space, creating an immense plume!
For decades, scientists didn’t know why Enceladus was the brightest world in the solar system, or how it related to Saturn’s E ring. Cassini found that both the fresh coating on its surface, and icy material in the E ring originate from vents connected to a global subsurface saltwater ocean that might host hydrothermal vents.
With its global ocean, unique chemistry and internal heat, Enceladus has become a promising lead in our search for worlds where life could exist.
Iapetus
Saturn’s two-toned moon Iapetus gets its odd coloring from reddish dust in its orbital path that is swept up and lands on the leading face of the moon.
The most unique, and perhaps most remarkable feature discovered on Iapetus in Cassini images is a topographic ridge that coincides almost exactly with the geographic equator. The physical origin of the ridge has yet to be explained...
It is not yet year whether the ridge is a mountain belt that has folded upward, or an extensional crack in the surface through which material from inside Iapetus erupted onto the surface and accumulated locally.
Saturn’s Rings
Saturn’s rings are made of countless particles of ice and dust, which Saturn’s moons push and tug, creating gaps and waves.
Scientists have never before studied the size, temperature, composition and distribution of Saturn’s rings from Saturn obit. Cassini has captured extraordinary ring-moon interactions, observed the lowest ring-temperature ever recorded at Saturn, discovered that the moon Enceladus is the source for Saturn’s E ring, and viewed the rings at equinox when sunlight strikes the rings edge-on, revealing never-before-seen ring features and details.
Cassini also studied features in Saturn’s rings called “spokes,” which can be longer than the diameter of Earth. Scientists think they’re made of thin icy particles that are lifted by an electrostatic charge and only last a few hours.
Auroras
The powerful magnetic field that permeates Saturn is strange because it lines up with the planet’s poles. But just like Earth’s field, it all creates shimmering auroras.
Auroras on Saturn occur in a process similar to Earth’s northern and southern lights. Particles from the solar wind are channeled by Saturn’s magnetic field toward the planet’s poles, where they interact with electrically charged gas (plasma) in the upper atmosphere and emit light.
Turbulent Atmosphere
Saturn’s turbulent atmosphere churns with immense storms and a striking, six-sided jet stream near its north pole.
Saturn’s north and south poles are also each beautifully (and violently) decorated by a colossal swirling storm. Cassini got an up-close look at the north polar storm and scientists found that the storm’s eye was about 50 times wider than an Earth hurricane’s eye.
Unlike the Earth hurricanes that are driven by warm ocean waters, Saturn’s polar vortexes aren’t actually hurricanes. They’re hurricane-like though, and even contain lightning. Cassini’s instruments have ‘heard’ lightning ever since entering Saturn orbit in 2004, in the form of radio waves. But it wasn’t until 2009 that Cassini’s cameras captured images of Saturnian lighting for the first time.
Cassini scientists assembled a short video of it, the first video of lightning discharging on a planet other than Earth.
Cassini’s adventure will end soon because it’s almost out of fuel. So to avoid possibly ever contaminating moons like Enceladus or Titan, on Sept. 15 it will intentionally dive into Saturn’s atmosphere.
The spacecraft is expected to lose radio contact with Earth within about one to two minutes after beginning its decent into Saturn’s upper atmosphere. But on the way down, before contact is lost, eight of Cassini’s 12 science instruments will be operating! More details on the spacecraft’s final decent can be found HERE.
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After 20 years in space, the Cassini spacecraft is running out of fuel. In 2010, Cassini began a seven-year mission extension in which the plan was to expend all of the spacecraft’s propellant exploring Saturn and its moons. This led to the Grand Finale and ends with a plunge into the planet’s atmosphere at 6:32 a.m. EDT on Friday, Sept. 15.
The spacecraft will ram through Saturn’s atmosphere at four times the speed of a re-entry vehicle entering Earth’s atmosphere, and Cassini has no heat shield. So temperatures around the spacecraft will increase by 30-to-100 times per minute, and every component of the spacecraft will disintegrate over the next couple of minutes…
Cassini’s gold-colored multi-layer insulation blankets will char and break apart, and then the spacecraft's carbon fiber epoxy structures, such as the 11-foot (3-meter) wide high-gain antenna and the 30-foot (11-meter) long magnetometer boom, will weaken and break apart. Components mounted on the outside of the central body of the spacecraft will then break apart, followed by the leading face of the spacecraft itself.
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Our Cassini spacecraft has been traveling in space for almost 20 years, exploring Saturn, its rings and even some of its moons. This mission has revealed never-before-seen events that are changing our understanding of how planetary systems form and what conditions might lead to habitats for life.
Cassini will complete its remarkable story of exploration with an intentional plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere, ending its mission.
Participate in our Grand Finale Events
Wednesday, Sept. 13
1 p.m. EDT – News Conference from our Jet Propulsion Laboratory with a detailed preview of final mission activities Watch HERE.
Thursday, Sept 14
4:00 - 5:00 p.m. EDT - NASA Social Live Broadcast with mission experts Watch HERE.
Friday, Sept. 15
7:00 – 8:30 a.m. EDT – Live commentary on NASA TV and online of the spacecraft’s final dive into Saturn’s atmosphere. Watch HERE.
Around 8:00 a.m. EDT – Expected time of last signal and science data from Cassini Watch HERE.
9:30 a.m. EDT – Post-mission news conference Watch HERE.
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Planets: As Seen by Voyager
The Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft explored Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune before starting their journey toward interstellar space. Here you’ll find some of those images, including “The Pale Blue Dot” – famously described by Carl Sagan – and what are still the only up-close images of Uranus and Neptune.
These twin spacecraft took some of the very first close-up images of these planets and paved the way for future planetary missions to return, like the Juno spacecraft at Jupiter, Cassini at Saturn and New Horizons at Pluto.
Jupiter
Photography of Jupiter began in January 1979, when images of the brightly banded planet already exceeded the best taken from Earth. They took more than 33,000 pictures of Jupiter and its five major satellites.
Findings:
Erupting volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io, which has 100 times the volcanic activity of Earth.
Better understanding of important physical, geological, and atmospheric processes happening in the planet, its satellites and magnetosphere.
Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere with dozens of interacting hurricane-like storm systems.
Saturn
The Saturn encounters occurred nine months apart, in November 1980 and August 1981. The two encounters increased our knowledge and altered our understanding of Saturn. The extended, close-range observations provided high-resolution data far different from the picture assembled during centuries of Earth-based studies.
Findings:
Saturn’s atmosphere is almost entirely hydrogen and helium.
Subdued contrasts and color differences on Saturn could be a result of more horizontal mixing or less production of localized colors than in Jupiter’s atmosphere.
An indication of an ocean beneath the cracked, icy crust of Jupiter's moon Europa.
Winds blow at high speeds in Saturn. Near the equator, the Voyagers measured winds about 1,100 miles an hour.
Uranus
The Voyager 2 spacecraft flew closely past distant Uranus, the seventh planet from the Sun. At its closest, the spacecraft came within 50,600 miles of Uranus’s cloud tops on Jan. 24, 1986. Voyager 2 radioed thousands of images and voluminous amounts of other scientific data on the planet, its moons, rings, atmosphere, interior and the magnetic environment surrounding Uranus.
Findings:
Revealed complex surfaces indicative of varying geologic pasts.
Detected 11 previously unseen moons.
Uncovered the fine detail of the previously known rings and two newly detected rings.
Showed that the planet’s rate of rotation is 17 hours, 14 minutes.
Found that the planet’s magnetic field is both large and unusual.
Determined that the temperature of the equatorial region, which receives less sunlight over a Uranian year, is nevertheless about the same as that at the poles.
Neptune
Voyager 2 became the first spacecraft to observe the planet Neptune in the summer of 1989. Passing about 3,000 miles above Neptune’s north pole, Voyager 2 made its closest approach to any planet since leaving Earth 12 years ago. Five hours later, Voyager 2 passed about 25,000 miles from Neptune’s largest moon, Triton, the last solid body the spacecraft had the opportunity to study.
Findings:
Discovered Neptune’s Great Dark Spot
Found that the planet has strong winds, around 1,000 miles per hour
Saw geysers erupting from the polar cap on Neptune’s moon Triton at -390 degrees Fahrenheit
Solar System Portrait
This narrow-angle color image of the Earth, dubbed ‘Pale Blue Dot’, is a part of the first ever ‘portrait’ of the solar system taken by Voyager 1.
The spacecraft acquired a total of 60 frames for a mosaic of the solar system from a distance of more than 4 billion miles from Earth and about 32 degrees above the ecliptic.
From Voyager’s great distance, Earth is a mere point of light, less than the size of a picture element even in the narrow-angle camera.
“Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.” - Carl Sagan
Both spacecraft will continue to study ultraviolet sources among the stars, and their fields and particles detectors will continue to search for the boundary between the Sun's influence and interstellar space. The radioisotope power systems will likely provide enough power for science to continue through 2025, and possibly support engineering data return through the mid-2030s. After that, the two Voyagers will continue to orbit the center of the Milky Way.
Learn more about the Voyager spacecraft HERE.
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Magnetospheres: How Do They Work?
The sun, Earth, and many other planets are surrounded by giant magnetic bubbles.
Space may seem empty, but it’s actually a dynamic place, dominated by invisible forces, including those created by magnetic fields. Magnetospheres – the areas around planets and stars dominated by their magnetic fields – are found throughout our solar system. They deflect high-energy, charged particles called cosmic rays that are mostly spewed out by the sun, but can also come from interstellar space. Along with atmospheres, they help protect the planets’ surfaces from this harmful radiation.
It’s possible that Earth’s protective magnetosphere was essential for the development of conditions friendly to life, so finding magnetospheres around other planets is a big step toward determining if they could support life.
But not all magnetospheres are created equal – even in our own backyard, not all planets in our solar system have a magnetic field, and the ones we have observed are all surprisingly different.
Earth’s magnetosphere is created by the constantly moving molten metal inside Earth. This invisible “force field” around our planet has an ice cream cone-like shape, with a rounded front and a long, trailing tail that faces away from the sun. The magnetosphere is shaped that way because of the constant pressure from the solar wind and magnetic fields on the sun-facing side.
Earth’s magnetosphere deflects most charged particles away from our planet – but some do become trapped in the magnetic field and create auroras when they rain down into the atmosphere.
We have several missions that study Earth’s magnetosphere – including the Magnetospheric Multiscale mission, Van Allen Probes, and Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms (also known as THEMIS) – along with a host of other satellites that study other aspects of the sun-Earth connection.
Mercury, with a substantial iron-rich core, has a magnetic field that is only about 1% as strong as Earth’s. It is thought that the planet’s magnetosphere is stifled by the intense solar wind, limiting its strength, although even without this effect, it still would not be as strong as Earth’s. The MESSENGER satellite orbited Mercury from 2011 to 2015, helping us understand our tiny terrestrial neighbor.
After the sun, Jupiter has by far the biggest magnetosphere in our solar system – it stretches about 12 million miles from east to west, almost 15 times the width of the sun. (Earth’s, on the other hand, could easily fit inside the sun.) Jupiter does not have a molten metal core like Earth; instead, its magnetic field is created by a core of compressed liquid metallic hydrogen.
One of Jupiter’s moons, Io, has intense volcanic activity that spews particles into Jupiter’s magnetosphere. These particles create intense radiation belts and the large auroras around Jupiter’s poles.
Ganymede, Jupiter’s largest moon, also has its own magnetic field and magnetosphere – making it the only moon with one. Its weak field, nestled in Jupiter’s enormous shell, scarcely ruffles the planet’s magnetic field.
Our Juno mission orbits inside the Jovian magnetosphere sending back observations so we can better understand this region. Previous observations have been received from Pioneers 10 and 11, Voyagers 1 and 2, Ulysses, Galileo and Cassini in their flybys and orbits around Jupiter.
Saturn’s moon Enceladus transforms the shape of its magnetosphere. Active geysers on the moon’s south pole eject oxygen and water molecules into the space around the planet. These particles, much like Io’s volcanic emissions at Jupiter, generate the auroras around the planet’s poles. Our Cassini mission studies Saturn’s magnetic field and auroras, as well as its moon Enceladus.
Uranus’ magnetosphere wasn't discovered until 1986 when data from Voyager 2’s flyby revealed weak, variable radio emissions. Uranus’ magnetic field and rotation axis are out of alignment by 59 degrees, unlike Earth’s, whose magnetic field and rotation axis differ by only 11 degrees. On top of that, the magnetic field axis does not go through the center of the planet, so the strength of the magnetic field varies dramatically across the surface. This misalignment also means that Uranus’ magnetotail – the part of the magnetosphere that trails away from the sun – is twisted into a long corkscrew.
Neptune’s magnetosphere is also tilted from its rotation axis, but only by 47. Just like on Uranus, Neptune’s magnetic field strength varies across the planet. This also means that auroras can be seen away from the planet’s poles – not just at high latitudes, like on Earth, Jupiter and Saturn.
Does Every Planet Have a Magnetosphere?
Neither Venus nor Mars have global magnetic fields, although the interaction of the solar wind with their atmospheres does produce what scientists call an “induced magnetosphere.” Around these planets, the atmosphere deflects the solar wind particles, causing the solar wind’s magnetic field to wrap around the planet in a shape similar to Earth’s magnetosphere.
What About Beyond Our Solar System?
Outside of our solar system, auroras, which indicate the presence of a magnetosphere, have been spotted on brown dwarfs – objects that are bigger than planets but smaller than stars.
There’s also evidence to suggest that some giant exoplanets have magnetospheres. As scientists now believe that Earth’s protective magnetosphere was essential for the development of conditions friendly to life, finding magnetospheres around exoplanets is a big step in finding habitable worlds.
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Solar System: Things to Know This Week
We've been up close and personal with Saturn for 13 years now, thanks to the Cassini mission.
From a tour of Saturn's many enthralling moons to an incredible view of Earth through its rings, the planet continues to captivate the imagination. This week, here are 10 things you need to know about our fascinating ringed neighbor.
1. Strange Sighting
When Galileo Galilei was observing Saturn in the 1600s, he noticed strange objects on each side of the planet. He drew in his notes a triple-bodied planet system with ears. These "ears" were later discovered to be the rings of Saturn.
2. Solar System Status
Saturn orbits our sun and is the sixth planet from the sun at an average distance of about 886 million miles or 9.5 AU.
3. Short Days
Time flies when you're on Saturn. One day on Saturn takes just 10.7 hours (the time it takes for Saturn to rotate or spin once). The planet makes a complete orbit around the sun (a year in Saturnian time) in 29 Earth years, or 10,756 Earth days. saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/2955/measuring-a-day
4. No Shoes Necessary
That's because you can't stand on Saturn—it's a gas-giant planet and doesn't have a solid surface. But you might want a jacket. The planet's temperatures can dip to -220 degrees F.
5. Few visitors
Only a handful of missions have made their way to Saturn: Pioneer 11, Voyager 1 and 2, and Cassini-Huygens, which is there now. Since 2004, Cassini has been exploring Saturn and its moons and rings—but will complete its journey on Sept. 15, 2017.
6. Saturn's Close-Up
This month is a great time to observe Saturn from Earth. Check out June's "What's Up?" video for a how-to guide.
7. Daring Dives
Saturn's spectacular ring system is made up of seven rings with several gaps and divisions between them. From now until September, the Cassini spacecraft is performing a set of daring dives every week between the planet and the rings. No other mission has ever explored this unique region before, and what we learn from these final orbits will help us understand of how giant planets—and planetary systems everywhere—form and evolve.
8. Many, Many Moons
Saturn has a total of 62 moons: 53 known moons, with an additional nine moons awaiting confirmation.
9. Curious Shapes
Saturn's moon Atlas looks like a flying saucer. See for yourself.
10. Would You Live on a Moon?
Saturn can't support life as we know it, but some of its moons have conditions that might support life. Ocean worlds could be the answer to life in space and two of Saturn's moons—Titan and Enceladus—are on that list.
Want to learn more? Read our full list of the 10 things to know this week about the solar system HERE.
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What’s Up for June 2017?
Have a planet party and compare Saturn and Jupiter! We’ll show you where and when to point your telescope or binoculars to see these planets and their largest moons.
Meet at midnight to have a planetary party when Jupiter and Saturn are visible at the same time!
The best time will be after midnight on June 17. To see the best details, you’ll need a telescope.
Saturn will be at opposition on June 15, when Saturn, the Earth and the sun are in a straight line.
Opposition provides the best views of Saturn and several of its brightest moons. At the very least, you should be able to see Saturn’s moon Titan, which is larger and brighter than Earth’s moon.
As mentioned earlier, you’ll be able to see Jupiter and Saturn in the night sky this month. Through a telescope, you’ll be able to see the cloud bands on both planets. Saturn’s cloud bands are fainter than those on Jupiter.
You’ll also have a great view of Saturn’s Cassini Division, discovered by astronomer Giovanni Cassini in 1675, namesake of our Cassini spacecraft.
Our Cassini spacecraft has been orbiting the planet since 2004 and is on a trajectory that will ultimately plunge it into Saturn’s atmosphere on September 15, 2017, bringing the mission to a close.
Our Juno spacecraft recently completed its sixth Jupiter flyby. Using only binoculars you can observe Jupiter’s 4 Galilean moons - Io, Callisto, Ganymede and Europa.
To learn about What’s Up in the skies for June 2017, watch the full video:
For more astronomy events, check out NASA's Night Sky Network at https://nightsky.jpl.nasa.gov/.
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It’s May the 4th: Are Star Wars Planets Real?
Look at what we’ve found so far.
Is your favorite Star Wars planet a desert world or an ice planet or a jungle moon?
It’s possible that your favorite planet exists right here in our galaxy. Astronomers have found over 3,700 planets around other stars, called “exoplanets.”
Some of these alien worlds could be very similar to arid Tatooine, watery Scarif and even frozen Hoth, according to our scientists.
Find out if your planet exists in a galaxy far, far away or all around you. And May the Fourth be with you!
Planets With Two Suns
From Luke Skywalker’s home world Tatooine, you can stand in the orange glow of a double sunset. The same could said for Kepler-16b, a cold gas giant roughly the size of Saturn, that orbits two stars. Kepler-16b was the Kepler telescope’s first discovery of a planet in a “circumbinary” orbit (that is, circling both stars, as opposed to just one, in a double star system).
The best part is that Tatooine aka Kepler-16b was just the first. It has family. A LOT of family. Half the stars in our galaxy are pairs, rather than single stars like our sun. If every star has at least one planet, that’s billions of worlds with two suns. Billions! Maybe waiting for life to be found on them.
Desert Worlds
Mars is a cold desert planet in our solar system, and we have plenty of examples of scorching hot planets in our galaxy (like Kepler-10b), which orbits its star in less than a day)! Scientists think that if there are other habitable planets in the galaxy, they’re more likely to be desert planets than ocean worlds. That’s because ocean worlds freeze when they’re too far from their star, or boil off their water if they’re too close, potentially making them unlivable. Perhaps, it’s not so weird that both Luke Skywalker and Rey grew up on planets that look a lot alike.
Ice Planets
An icy super-Earth named OGLE-2005-BLG-390Lb reminded scientists so much of the frozen Rebel base they nicknamed it “Hoth,” after its frozen temperature of minus 364 degrees Fahrenheit. Another Hoth-like planet was discovered in April 2017; an Earth-mass icy world orbiting its star at the same distance as Earth orbits the sun. But its star is so faint, the surface of OGLE-2016-BLG-1195Lb is probably colder than Pluto.
Forest worlds
Both the forest moon of Endor and Takodana, the home of Han Solo’s favorite cantina in “Force Awakens,” are green like our home planet. But astrobiologists think that plant life on other worlds could be red, black, or even rainbow-colored!
In February 2017, the Spitzer Space Telescope discovered seven Earth-sized planets in the same system, orbiting the tiny red star TRAPPIST-1.
The light from a red star, also known as an M dwarf, is dim and mostly in the infrared spectrum (as opposed to the visible spectrum we see with our sun). And that could mean plants with wildly different colors than what we’re used to seeing on Earth. Or, it could mean animals that see in the near-infrared.
What About Moons?
In Star Wars, Endor, the planet with the cute Ewoks, is actually a habitable moon of a gas giant. Now, we’re looking for life on the moons of our own gas giants. Saturn’s moon Enceladus or Jupiter’s moon Europa are ocean worlds that may well support life. Our Cassini spacecraft explored the Saturn system and its moons, before the mission ended in 2017. Watch the video and learn more about the missions’s findings.
And Beyond
The next few years will see the launch of a new generation of spacecraft to search for planets around other stars. Our TESS spacecraft launched in April 2018, and will discover new exoplanets by the end of the year. The James Webb Space Telescope is slated to launch in 2020. That’s one step closer to finding life.
You might want to take our ‘Star Wars: Fact or Fiction?’ quiz. Try it! Based on your score you may obtain the title of Padawan, Jedi Knight, or even Jedi Master!
You don’t need to visit a galaxy far, far away to find wondrous worlds. Just visit this one ... there’s plenty to see.
Discover more about exoplanets here: https://exoplanets.nasa.gov/
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Ocean Worlds Beyond Earth
We’re incredibly lucky to live on a planet drenched in water, nestled in a perfect distance from our sun and wrapped with magnetic fields keeping our atmosphere intact against harsh radiation and space weather.
We know from recent research that life can persist in the cruelest of environments here on Earth, which gives us hope to finding life thriving on other worlds. While we have yet to find life outside of Earth, we are optimistic about the possibilities, especially on other ocean worlds right here in our solar system.
So…What’s the News?!
Two of our veteran missions are providing tantalizing new details about icy, ocean-bearing moons of Jupiter and Saturn, further enhancing the scientific interest of these and other “ocean worlds” in our solar system and beyond!
Cassini scientists announce that a form of energy for life appears to exist in Saturn’s moon Enceladus, and Hubble researchers report additional evidence of plumes erupting from Jupiter’s moon Europa.
The Two Missions: Cassini and Hubble
Cassini
Our Cassini spacecraft has found that hydrothermal vents in the ocean of Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus are producing hydrogen gas, which could potentially provide a chemical energy source for life.
Cassini discovered that this little moon of Saturn was active in 2005. The discovery that Enceladus has jets of gas and icy particles coming out of its south polar region surprised the world. Later we determined that plumes of material are coming from a global ocean under the icy crust, through large cracks known as “tiger stripes.”
We have more evidence now – this time sampled straight from the plume itself – of hydrothermal activity, and we now know the water is chemically interacting with the rock beneath the ocean and producing the kind of chemistry that could be used by microbes IF they happened to be there.
This is the culmination of 12 years of investigations by Cassini and a capstone finding for the mission. We now know Enceladus has nearly all the ingredients needed for life as we know it.
The Cassini spacecraft made its deepest dive through the plume on Oct. 28, 2015. From previous flybys, Cassini determined that nearly 98% of the gas in the plume is water and the rest is a mixture of other molecules, including carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia.
Cassini’s other instruments provided evidence of hydrothermal activity in the ocean. What we really wanted to know was…Is there hydrogen being produced that microbes could use to make energy? And that’s exactly what we found!
To be clear…we haven’t discovered microbes at Enceladus, but vents of this type at Earth host these kinds of life. We’re cautiously excited at the prospect that there might be something like this at Enceladus too!
Hubble
The Hubble Space Telescope has also been studying another ocean world in our solar system: Europa!
Europa is one of the four major moons of Jupiter, about the size of our own moon but very different in appearance. It’s a cold, icy world with a relatively smooth, bright surface crisscrossed with dark cracks and patches of reddish material.
What makes Europa interesting is that it’s believed to have a global ocean, underneath a thick crust of ice. In fact, it’s got about twice as much ocean as planet Earth!
In 2014, we detected evidence of intermittent water plumes on the surface of Europa, which is interesting because they may provide us with easier access to subsurface liquid water without having to drill through miles of ice.
And now, in 2016, we’ve found one particular plume candidate that appears to be at the same location that it was seen in 2014.
This is exciting because if we can establish that a particular feature does repeat, then it is much more likely to be real and we can attempt to study and understand the processes that cause it to turn on or off.
This plume also happens to coincide with an area where Europa is unusually warm as compared to the surrounding terrain. The plume candidates are about 30 to 60 miles (50 to 100 kilometers) in height and are well-positioned for observation, being in a relatively equatorial and well-determined location.
What Does All This Mean and What’s Next?
Hubble and Cassini are inherently different missions, but their complementary scientific discoveries, along with the synergy between our current and planned missions, will help us in finding out whether we are alone in the universe.
Hubble will continue to observe Europa. If you’re wondering how we might be able to get more information on the Europa plume, the upcoming Europa Clipper mission will be carrying a suite of 9 instruments to investigate whether the mysterious icy moon could harbor conditions favorable for life. Europa Clipper is slated to launch in the 2020s.
This future mission will be able to study the surface of Europa in great detail and assess the habitability of this moon. Whether there’s life there or not is a question for this future mission to discover!
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What’s Up for June 2016?
What's Up for June? Saturn at its best! Plus, good views of Mars, Jupiter and Jupiter's moons continue from dusk to dawn.
You don't have to stay up late to see Jupiter, Mars and Saturn this month, because they're all visible soon after sunset. Jupiter is the brightest of the three, visible in the western sky all evening.
The four Galilean moons are easily visible in binoculars or telescopes. If you think you're seeing 5 moons on June 10th, you're not. One of them is a distant star in the constellation Leo.
For telescope viewers, the time near Mars' closest approach to Earth, May 30th this year, is the best time to try to see the two moons of Mars: Phobos and Deimos. It takes patience, very steady skies and good charts! Mars is still large and bright in early June, but it fades as speedy Earth, in its shorter orbit around the sun, passes it.
Saturn has been close to Mars recently. This month Saturn reaches opposition, when Saturn, Earth and the sun are in a straight line with Earth in the middle, providing the best and closest views of the ringed beauty and several of its moons. You'll be able to make out cloud bands on Saturn, in delicate shades of cream and butterscotch. They're fainter than the bands of Jupiter. Through a telescope you'll see Saturn's rings tilted about as wide as they get: 26 degrees.
You'll also have a ring-side view of the Cassini division, discovered by Giovanni Domenico Cassini, namesake of our Cassini spacecraft, orbiting Saturn since 2004 and continuing through September 2017. When you look at Saturn through a telescope, you can't help but see several of its 4 brightest moons, and maybe more. If you just see one, that's Titan, 50% larger than our own moon. A telescope can also reveal more moons, like Saturn's two-colored moon Iapetus. It takes 3 months to orbit Saturn, and it's fairly easy to see.
There's a bright comet visible this month, Comet PanSTARRS. It's best seen from the southern hemisphere, but it's also visible from the U.S. low in the morning sky. Comet PanSTARRS can be seen through a telescope near the beautiful Helix Nebula on June 4, but it is visible all month.
Watch the full June “What’s Up” video for more: https://youtu.be/M7RtIa9zBYA
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Solar System: Things to Know This Week
Earlier this month, Mars was at opposition, which is the point in their orbits when Mars, Earth and the sun all line up, making for good conditions to view the Red Planet from Earth.
Now, it’s Saturn’s turn. The ringed planet will be at opposition on June 3, and this week is a great time to see it — both in the sky as well as up close, thanks to our spacecraft. Here are a few things to know about Saturn exploration this week:
1. Group Portrait
Thanks to their current orbital positions, our sun-observing spacecraft STEREO-A was recently able to capture the sun, Saturn, Mars and Earth in one image. Take a closer look HERE. Discover more about the STEREO mission HERE.
2. Likable, Lick-able Saturn
Saturn’s handsome visage is featured among the new stamps that the US Postal Service is releasing this week to highlight our adventures in planetary exploration.
3. Do You Even Know Saturn?
Yes, yes, it’s the one with the rings. But did you know Saturn has winds that can exceed 1000 miles per hour? Or that its magnetic field is hundreds of times as powerful as the Earth’s? Or that its day is just 10 hours long? How well do you really know the sixth planet?
4. Picking Up Signals
One thing you many not know about the planet is that it’s loud, at least if you listen to its radio signals. When our robotic Cassini spacecraft first approached Saturn, it detected the powerful fields that surround it. Engineers turned those signals into beautiful, eerie sounds. Listen to them HERE.
5. Not All Who Wander Are Lost
The Cassini mission’s explorations of the Saturn system are very much ongoing. In the next few days, the spacecraft will be touring many locations, including the giant moon Titan, Saturn’s turbulent clouds, the tiny moon Albiorix and more! Get the full itinerary HERE.
Want to learn more? Read our full list of the 10 things to know this week about the solar system HERE.
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Worlds That Will Make You Believe Star Wars is Real
The fantastical planets in Star Wars preceded our discovery of real planets outside our solar system…but fiction isn’t too far from the facts. When we send our spacecraft into the solar system and point our telescopes beyond, we often see things that seem taken right out of the Star Wars universe.
Is there a more perfect time than May the 4th to compare real worlds to the ones depicted in Star Wars?
Probably not...so here are a few:
Mimas
Saturn’s moon, Mimas, has become known as the "Death Star" moon because of how its 80-mile wide Herschel crater creates a resemblance to the Imperial battle station, especially when seen in this view from our Cassini spacecraft.
Kepler-452b
The most recently revealed exoplanet dubbed as Earth’s bigger, older cousin, Kepler-452b, might make a good stand-in for Coruscant — the high tech world seen in several Star Wars films whose surface is encased in a single, globe-spanning city. Kepler-452b belongs to a star system 1.5 billion years older than Earth’s! That would give any technologically adept species more than a billion-year jump ahead of us.
CoRoT-7b
At 3,600 degrees Fahrenheit, CoRoT-7B is a HOT planet. Discovered in 2010 with France’s CoRoT satellite, it’s some 480 light-years away, and has a diameter 70% larger than Earth’s, with nearly five times the mass. Possibly the boiled-down remnant of a Saturn-sized planet, its orbit is so tight that its star looms much larger in its sky than our sun appears to us, keeping its sun-facing surface molten! This scorching planet orbiting close to its star could be a good analog for planet Mustafar from Star Wars.
Kepler-16b
Luke Skywalker’s home planet, Tatooine, is said to possess a harsh, desert environment, swept by sandstorms as it roasts under the glare of twin suns. Real exoplanets in the thrall of two or more suns are even harsher! Kepler-16b was the Kepler telescope’s first discovery of a planet in a “circumbinary” orbit (a.k.a, circling both stars, as opposed to just one, in a double star system). This planet, however, is likely cold, about the size of Saturn, and gaseous, though partly composed of rock.
OGLE-2005-BLG-390
Fictional Hoth is a frozen tundra that briefly serves as a base for the hidden Rebel Alliance. It’s also the nickname of real exoplanet OGLE-2005-BLG-390, a cold super-Earth whose surface temperature clocks in at minus 364 degrees Fahrenheit.
Kepler-22b
Kepler-22b, analog to the Star Wars planet Kamino…which was the birthplace of the army of clone soldiers, is a super-Earth that could be covered in a super ocean. The jury is still out on Kepler-22b’s true nature; at 2.4 times Earth’s radius, it might even be gaseous. But if the ocean world idea turns out to be right, we can envision a physically plausible Kamino-like planet.
Gas Giants
Gas giants of all stripes populate the real exoplanet universe; in Star Wars, a gas giant called Bespin is home to a “Cloud City” actively involved in atmospheric mining. Mining the atmospheres of giant gas planets is a staple of science fiction. We too have examined the question, and found that gases such as helium-3 and hydrogen could theoretically be extracted from the atmospheres of Uranus and Neptune.
Exomoons
Endor, the forested realm of the Ewoks, orbits a gas giant. Exomoon detection is still in its infancy for scientists on Earth. However, a possible exomoon (a moon circling a distant planet) was observed in 2014 via microlensing. It will remain unconfirmed, however, since each microlensing event can be seen only once.
May the 4th be with you!
Discover more about exoplanets here: https://exoplanets.jpl.nasa.gov/
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The Shakespearean Moons of Uranus
This weekend marks the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, and we’re highlighting the moons of Uranus; some of which are named after characters from his works.
While most of the moons orbiting other planets take their names from Greek mythology, Uranus’ moons are unique in bing named for Shakespearean characters, along with a couple of them being named for characters from the works of Alexander Pope.
Using the Hubble Space Telescope and improved ground-based telescopes, astronomers have discovered a total of 27 known moons around Uranus.
Here’s a sampling of some of the unique aspects of the moons:
Miranda
Shakespearean work: The Tempest
Miranda, the innermost and smallest of the five major satellites, has a surface unlike any other moon that’s been seen. It has a giant fault canyon as much as 12 times as deep as the Grand Canyon, terraced layers and surfaces that appear very old, and others that look much younger.
Ariel
Shakespearean work: The Tempest
Ariel has the brightest and possibly the youngest surface among all the moons of Uranus. It has a few large craters and many small ones, indicating that fairly recent low-impact collisions wiped out the large craters that would have been left by much earlier, bigger strikes. Intersecting valleys pitted with craters scars its surface.
Oberon
Shakespearean work: A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Oberon, the outermost of the five major moons, is old, heavily cratered and shows little signs of internal activity. Unidentified dark material appears on the floors of many of its craters.
Cordelia and Ophelia
Shakespearean works: Cordelia - King Lear; Ophelia - Hamlet
Cordelia and Ophelia are shepherd moons that keep Uranus’ thin, outermost “epsilon” ring well defined.
Between them and miranda is a swarm of eight small satellites unlike any other system of planetary moons. This region is so crowded that astronomers don’t yet understand how the little moons have managed to avoid crashing into each other. They may be shepherds for the planet’s 10 narrow rings, and scientists think there must be still more moons, interior to any known, to confine the edges of the inner rings.
Want to learn more about all of Uranus’s moons? Visit: http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/uranus/moons
Check out THIS blog from our Chief Scientist Ellen Stofan, where she reflects on the life and legacy of William Shakespeare on the 400th anniversary of his death on April 23, 1616.
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What Have We Learned About Pluto?
This month (March 2016), in the journal Science, New Horizons scientists have authored the first comprehensive set of papers describing results from last summer’s Pluto system flyby. These detailed papers completely transform our view of Pluto and reveal the former “astronomer’s planet” to be a real world with diverse and active geology, exotic surface chemistry, a complex atmosphere, puzzling interaction with the sun and an intriguing system of small moons.
Here’s a breakdown of what we’ve learned about Pluto:
1. Pluto has been geologically active throughout the past 4 billion years. The age-dating of Pluto’s surface through crater counts has revealed that Pluto has been geologically active throughout the past 4 billion years. Further, the surface of Pluto’s informally-named Sputnik Planum, a massive ice plain larger than Texas, is devoid of any detectable craters and estimated to be geologically young – no more than 10 million years old.
2. Pluto’s moon Charon has been discovered to have an ancient surface. As an example, the great expanse of smooth plains on Charon is likely a vast cryovolcanic flow or flows that erupted onto Charon’s surface about 4 billion years ago. These flows are likely related to the freezing of an internal ocean that globally ruptured Charon’s crust.
3. Pluto’s surface has many types of terrain. The distribution of compositional units on Pluto’s surface – from nitrogen-rich, to methane-rich, to water-rich – has been found to be surprisingly complex, creating puzzles for understanding Pluto’s climate and geologic history. The variations in surface composition on Pluto are unprecedented elsewhere in the outer solar system.
4. Pluto’s atmosphere is colder than we thought. Pluto’s upper atmospheric temperature has been found to be much colder (by about 70 degrees Fahrenheit) than had been thought from Earth-based studies, with important implications for its atmospheric escape rate. Why the atmosphere is colder is a mystery.
5. We know what Pluto’s atmosphere is made of. The New Horizon spacecraft made observations of sunlight passing through Pluto’s atmosphere. We see absorption features that indicate an atmosphere made up of nitrogen (like Earth’s) with methane, acetylene and ethylene as minor constituents.
6. We might have an idea for how Pluto’s haze formed. For first time, a plausible mechanism for forming Pluto’s atmospheric haze layers has been found. This mechanism involves the concentration of haze particles by atmospheric buoyancy waves, created by winds blowing over Pluto’s mountainous topography. Pluto’s haze extends hundreds of kilometers into space, and embedded within it are over 20 very thin, but far brighter, layers.
7. There isn’t much dust around Pluto. Before the flyby, there was concern that a small piece of debris (even the size of a grain of sand) could cause great damage to (or even destroy) the spacecraft. But the Venetia Burney Student Dust Counter (an instrument on the New Horizons spacecraft) only counted a single dust particle within five days of the flyby. This is similar to the density of dust particles in free space in the outer solar system – about 6 particles per cubic mile – showing that the region around Pluto is, in fact, not filled with debris.
8. Pluto’s atmosphere is smaller than we expected. The uppermost region of Pluto’s atmosphere is slowly escaping to space. The hotter the upper atmosphere, the more rapid the gasses escape. The lower the planet’s mass, the lower the gravity, and the faster the atmospheric loss. As molecules escape, they are ionized by solar ultraviolet light. Once ionized, the charged molecules are carried away by the solar wind. As more Pluto-genic material is picked up by the solar wind, the more the solar wind is slowed down and deflected around Pluto. So - the net result is a region (the interaction region), which is like a blunt cone pointed toward the sun, where the escaping ionized gasses interact with the solar wind. The cone extends to a distance about 6 Pluto radii from Pluto toward the sun, but extend behind Pluto at least 400 Pluto radii behind Pluto - like a wake behind the dwarf planet.
9. Pluto’s moons are brighter than we thought. The high albedos (reflectiveness) of Pluto’s small satellites (moons) – about 50 to 80 percent – are entirely different from the much lower reflectiveness of the small bodies in the general Kuiper Belt population, which range from about 5 to 20 percent. This difference lends further support to the idea that these moons were not captured from the general Kuiper Belt population, but instead formed by the collection of material produced in the aftermath of the giant collision that created the entire Pluto satellite system.
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What’s Up for March 2016?
In March, Jupiter, it’s moons and moon shadows will all be visible in the sky. Find out when and where to look up:
Jupiter dominates the evening sky this month, rising at sunset and setting at dawn. On March 8, Jupiter reaches what is called “opposition”. Imagine that Jupiter and the sun are at opposite ends of a straight line, with the Earth in between. This brings Jupiter its closest to Earth, so it shines brighter and appears larger in telescopes.
On the nights of March 14 – 15, March 21 – 22 and March 29, two of Jupiter’s moons will cross the planet’s disk.
When the planet is at opposition and the sun shines on Jupiter’s moons, we can see the moon’s shadow crossing the planet. There are actually 11 of these double shadow transits in March!
The next six months will be awesome times for you to image Jupiter when it’s highest in the sky; near midnight now, and a little earlier each night through the late summer.
Even through the smallest telescopes or binoculars, you should be able to see the two prominent belts on each side of Jupiter’s equator made up of the four Galilean moons: Io, Europa Ganymede and Calisto. If you have a good enough view, you may even see Jupiter’s Red Spot!
Our Juno spacecraft will arrive at Jupiter on July 4th of this year and will go into orbit around the giant planet. Right now, the Juno mission science team is actively seeking amateur and professional images of the planet. These images are uploaded to a Juno website, and the public is invited to discuss points of interest in Jupiter’s atmosphere.
Locations will later be voted on and the favorites will be targets for JunoCam, the spacecraft’s imaging camera. Once JunoCam has taken the images, they’ll be posted online. Imaging participants can then process these raw mission images and re-upload them for others to view.
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