WIRED Staff
Science

Slideshow: Oxygen Bursts in Saturn's Rings

Something's going on in Saturn's outermost rings, where oxygen levels jump explosively then diminish over a month. One theory is crashing moonlets. Amit Asaravala reports from Pasadena, California.
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Despite the views of the surface of Saturn's Titan moon provided by the Cassini spacecraft, the moon remains inscrutable to the human eye. Images taken with the narrow angle camera using red, green and blue color filters were combined to create this view.Courtesy of NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

See related story: Oxygen Bursts in Saturn's Rings

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Scientists are fascinated by Saturn's hazy moon Titan because it may contain an environment that mirrors that on Earth billions of years ago.

Courtesy of NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
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Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory had hoped to see more detail than this in the latest images from Cassini's flyby of Saturn's hazy moon Titan. The bright spots are possibly clouds in the atmosphere.

Courtesy of NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
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Like the mysterious dark markings on Mars that once haunted astronomer Percival Lowell, shadowy features and mysterious markings appear to stain the surface of puzzling Titan. Sixteen Cassini narrow angle camera images were used to produce the surface map shown here.

Courtesy of NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute