Word: saturnian
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Voyager 1's performance was the equal of the marvels it found. Commanded only by its own computers, the robot soared past the mysterious moon Titan, approaching to within 4,000 km (2,500 miles) of its shrouded surface. Gathering ever more speed under the tug of Saturnian gravity, it plunged downward toward the outer edge of Saturn's rings, swirling bits of cosmic debris. Reaching a peak velocity of 91,000 km (56,600 miles) per hour, Voyager skirted within 124,240 km (77,200 miles) of the planet's banded cloud tops for its nearest...
...most cursory study of Voyager's flood of data, scientists were staggered by a succession of discoveries. Many involved Saturn's rings, which until the recent finding of similar features around Uranus and Jupiter were thought to be unique. Before Voyager's visit only six Saturnian rings and a few gaps between them were known. Now there seem to be 1,000 rings or so. One of the so-called gaps may contain several dozen ringlets. Titan, the largest moon in the solar system, appears to be wrapped in a dense atmosphere of nitrogen vapors, rather than...
Even if those ambitions are not realized, Voyager 1's conquest of Saturn is already providing an unexpectedly rich scientific payoff from the $500 million program. Almost as soon as the spacecraft began closing on the Saturnian system, the pace of discovery accelerated dramatically. As early as last August, Voyager 1's cameras picked up a red spot in Saturn's southern hemisphere. Another one soon showed in the northern hemisphere. Though these features remind scientists of Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a great whirling storm that has lasted for at least three centuries, Saturn...
...surface of Tethys, a middle-size Saturnian moon, is cut by a strange, sinuous trench, perhaps the result of a sharp blow delivered on the opposite side of its globe, which is dappled with craters and highlands. Dione resembles the earth's moon, marked by all sorts of craters, big and little, features that look like our moon's "seas," and ice flows, rills and highlands. Iapetus, one of the most curious of Saturn's moons-one hemisphere is five or six times as bright as the other -was seen only from a vast distance...