Solscape

A giant cloud half the size of the United States has been imaged on Saturn’s moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft. The cloud may be responsible for the material that fills the lakes discovered last year by Cassini’s radar instrument.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/newsreleases/newsrelease20070201/

Two years ago, planetary scientists across the world watched as Europe and the US did something amazing. The Huygens descent module drifted down through the hazy atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan, beaming its data back to Earth via the Cassini mothership. Today, Huygens’s data are still continuing to surprise researchers.

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cassini-Huygens/Huygens_s_second_landing_anniversary_the_surprises_continue

Den Verdacht gab es schon länger, doch dank der detaillierten Auswertung von Radardaten der Raumsonde Cassini vom 22. Juli 2006 glauben amerikanische Wissenschaftler nun, eindeutige Belege dafür gefunden zu haben, dass es auf dem Saturnmond Titan tatsächlich Seen aus flüssigem Methan gibt. Die Forscher berichten über ihre Ergebnisse in der neuen Ausgabe des Wissenschaftsmagazins “Nature”.
Titan Has Liquid Lakes, Scientists Report in Nature

Abstract: The lakes of Titan

Artikel auf wissenschaft.de: Titans vermisste Seen

In recognition of the past year, the Cassini imaging team has released an amazing Saturnian photo collection:
Cassini Sends End-of-Year Greetings From Across the Solar System

A Journey in Images Through 2006

The tallest mountains ever seen on Titan – coated with layers of organic material and blanketed by clouds – have been imaged by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/newsreleases/newsrelease20061212/

If you want to understand what causes the gaps in Saturn’s rings, just look at a picture taken by Cassini on October 27, 2006. The bright object in the middle of Saturn’s Encke gap is one of its moons: Pan. The tiny moon is only 26 km across, but its minor gravity can clear out the ring particles.
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08317

The mysterious spokes in Saturn’s rings may be created by massive thunderstorms in the planet’s atmosphere. If the theory is right, these faint features are the signature of awesome events: lightning strokes ten thousand times more energetic than those on Earth, releasing beams of electrons that surge up from Saturn’s surface to whack into the rings and blast out jets of electrically charged dust. The idea, proposed by Geraint Jones of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, and his colleagues remains speculative. No one has ever seen storm-induced electron beams on Saturn. But the researchers say that the theory would explain some puzzling features of the spokes, and that it fits with what is known about the effects of thunderstorms on Earth. The spokes of Saturn’s rings were first discovered by the Voyager I and II spacecraft when they passed close to the gas giant planet in 1980 and 1981.
Source : Jones G. H., et al. Geophys. Res. Lett., 33 . L21202 (2006)

A hurricane-like whirlpool with a well-developed eye ringed by towering clouds, a phenomenon never before seen on another planet, has been sighted by multiple Cassini instruments at Saturn’s south pole.
http://ciclops.org/view_event.php?id=57&flash=1

A new incredible photograph shows Saturn’s potato-shaped moon Janus posing above the planet’s cloudy atmosphere. Janus is only 181 kilometers across, and it shows the scars of many impacts with other objects. Like Saturn’s other smaller moons, Janus could be covered with a layer of fine, dust-sized icy material. The Cassini spacecraft took the photo on September 25, 2006, when it was only 145.000 kilometers from Janus.
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08296

Flooded rivers and more lakes have been spied on Saturn’s moon Titan in new images by the Cassini spacecraft. The features are all likely filled with liquid methane or ethane, providing insight into a methane cycle analogous to the hydrological cycle on Earth. Cassini has revealed dozens of dark areas by peering through the hazy atmosphere with its radar instrument. Previous flybys of the giant moon suggested these were lakes. The lakes seen by radar are clustered around the north polar region. They may be seasonal, accumulating at each pole from winter rains and drying up during the summer. Spring is now approaching for Titan’s northern hemisphere and some of the lakes there show indeed signs of evaporation. A lake with many lobes has been seen in the latest flyby of the moon, on October 9, 2006, suggesting it was created when a system of interconnecting rivers overflowed their banks to fill in the surrounding topography.
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/imagedetails/index.cfm?imageId=2325