On July 30, 1610, the famous astronomer Galileo Galilei became the first to observe rings around the planet Saturn.

Shortly after the telescope was invented in 1608, Galileo peered out into the solar system and saw the amazing ring system. At first he didn't actually think they were rings.

Instead, Galileo thought Saturn might have planetary "love handles" that gave it a weird shape. He also wondered if perhaps he was looking at two very large moons on either side of the planet. It wasn't until 1659 that another astronomer named Christiaan Huygens figured out that these weird features were actually Saturn's rings.

Why it mattered

Today, we may take Saturn's rings for granted. After all, it IS known as the "ringed planet" and the jewel of our solar system. But there was a time when we didn't know planets had rings at all, and that's where Galileo's discovery came in.

The telescope was a brand new technology, just two years old, when Galileo took it from a seafaring and distance tool and turned it into an essential item for astronomy. It helped him discover the major moons of Jupiter (we call them the Galilean moons for a reason) and also Saturn's rings. In time, astronomers discovered rings around other large planets in our solar system (Jupiter has them, and Uranus, too), revealing them to be made up of tiny pieces of what may have been torn apart moons.

The study of Saturn's rings has allowed astronomers to see the raw materials of the early solar system. They're made mostly of water ice and shaped by so-called shepherd moons, tiny satellites that orbit Saturn in between ring bands. Saturn's rings even have "kittens," distinct formations scientists are only now starting to understand.

NASA's Pioneer 11 passed through Saturn's ring plane in 1979, with the Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 probes visiting in the 1980s. The Cassini spacecraft was the first to orbit Saturn, ultimately passing through the rings several times in 2017 before ending its mission in a "grand finale" with a crash into Saturn itself.

Editor's Note: The full "Buck Moon" charged into the summer sky on July 29 to to dazzle stargazers with a gorgeous display of natural moonlight and we have the photos to prove it! Check out our wrap article to see jaw dropping photos of the July 2026 full moon captured from around the world.

The July full "Buck Moon" rises tonight to lead Saturn, Mars and Mercury in a spectacular mini planetary parade through the summer sky. Here's what you need to know.

July's full moon phase occurs at 10:36 a.m. EDT on July 29 (1436 GMT), when the lunar disk will appear fully illuminated. It's often called the Buck Moon, to reflect the time when young male deer grow out their antlers. It has also been named the Berry Moon by the indigenous Anishinaabe people and as the Thunder Moon by the Western Abenaki people, according to the Old Farmer's Almanac.

Look to the southeastern horizon at sunset to catch the full Buck Moon as it creeps slowly into the summer sky. The moon may appear particularly large at moonrise thanks to a phenomenon known as the "Moon Illusion", where our brains trick us into perceiving it as larger than it actually is while close to the horizon. You might also see it adopt a yellow-orange hue as Earth's atmosphere scatters the bluer wavelengths of its light as it travels low in the sky.

Sunlight strikes the moon head on during July's full moon phase, leaving no shadows to emphasize the presence of the countless craters that litter the lunar surface. It's a perfect time to explore the dark lunar seas that scar the moon's surface, where ancient lava flows once flooded networks of impact basins, then hardened billions of years ago, repaving vast swathes of Earth's natural satellite.

Grab a pair of binoculars or a telescope and look a little closer. You'll find a network of bright streaks intersecting as they travel outward from youthful impact craters. These features are known as ejecta rays, and were created when material cast out in violent impacts fell back onto the lunar surface. Every crater on the moon once had its own set of ejecta rays. However, all but the most recent have since faded into obscurity due to space weathering.

Venus will appear as a bright evening star to the west after sunset, serving as the opening act for a magnificent planetary procession in the hours that follow. Saturn, Mars and Mercury will rise in the east to trail the moon in a majestic arc as it treads a ponderous path from east to west through the summer sky.

Want to capture the incredible predawn lineup for yourself? Then be sure to check out our guide to photographing the planets, along with our expert tips on photographing the moon. You can also read our roundup of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography to ensure that you're ready for the next big skywatching event.

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your astrophotography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

Correction 7/29: Look to the southeastern horizon at sunset to catch the full Buck Moon, not the southwestern horizon.

BOULDER, Colorado - Humans have been exploring outer space since April 1961 with the pioneering flight of Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin.

Today, several nations are making new plans to launch human beings back to the moon, then onward to Mars and perhaps beyond. But will that pursuit be short-circuited by the fast-paced merger of artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced humanoid robots?

That proposition was broached during a Humans to Titan Summit, held here June 11-12, a first-time event attended by specialists seeking to send astronauts to Titan, Saturn's largest moon. It is an attractive, attention-getting place in space. Titan comes with a thick atmosphere and is a distinctive world of clouds, rain, rivers, lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons like methane and ethane. But will humans ever set foot on Titan, or will AI-powered advanced robots make the voyage instead?

Exciting and futile

The Humans to Titan Summit was both exciting and futile, said Pascal Lee, chairman of the Mars Institute and a planetary scientist at the SETI Institute. He is also director of the NASA Haughton-Mars Project at NASA Ames Research Center.

"The futile part comes from the fact that humans going to Titan is a longer-term goal in an age where technology is evolving so quickly," Lee told Space.com. "But it has to be done and it's worth doing as it gives us some sense of direction."

Lee's central position is that a human trek to Titan would be decades in the future. No surprise there.

"Meanwhile there's a revolution that's taking place on Earth," he said, the emergence of android robots imbued with AI, innovations that are brewing and maturing relatively quickly.

Artificial super intelligence

"Everyone is aspiring to achieve artificial 'general' intelligence. However, we're nearing the moment where AI is no longer narrow and focused on specific tasks to a point where it essentially matches human intelligence.

"Artificial 'super intelligence,'" said Lee, "is actually having the complexity and subtleties of human thinking," he said.

Whether such an android would have a soul or be self-aware, Lee said that's more speculative. "But it certainly can get to the point where it becomes a very objective observer and scientist."

Doesn't take a visionary

"Android robots have exceeded in many ways the performance of many humans," said Lee. "They can run, jump, do acrobatics, and with AI it doesn't take a visionary to see that you essentially get an artificial human," he said.

A multi-tasking android robot doesn't need to be fed, nor breathe or sleep, and doesn't produce its own waste, Lee said. "It has all the usefulness of a human being and none of the risks and shortcomings, along with the cost of sending humans. It automatically becomes your best exploration system," he said, "and behaves like a biological human, but minus the biology. That's our future in space."

In the meantime, robotics is making strides.

So much so that having a robot look like a human is no longer strictly science fiction. In terms of the physical performance of robots, Lee senses "the race is on" between China and the United States.

Training ground

In fact, Lee points to a humanoid robot offered by China's UBTech Robotics, the Walker S2. It can change its own depleted battery, swapping it out with a fresh, fully-charged battery.

That skill mimics immortality, Lee said, with the Chinese firm calling it another step toward fully autonomous machines capable of working 24/7.

Noting the NASA Haughton-Mars Project — an analog field research effort situated on Devon Island in the Arctic — Lee said that site could be used as a training ground for how humans and android robots can team up together.

"My hope is that on Devon Island we could start working with AI and 'able-to-learn' android robots. You could train an android robot to be a field assistant," said Lee.

Circling back to Titan, Lee envisions that once an android-installed infrastructure on that distant Saturnian moon is set up, humans could make an official visit to the facility, completely run by robots.

"I think, ultimately, we think of Titan as the next big leap beyond Mars. But to me Titan is even more interesting as the last leap before interstellar travel," Lee concluded.

BOULDER, Colorado — After Earth's moon and Mars, where could humans plant their footprints?

The "Humans to Titan Summit 2026" was held here on June 11 and June 12 to explore the concept of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, as the next human exploration destination, post-Mars.

Researchers looked into how demanding such a trek could be and what would be required to make it, along with next steps to further that ambitious goal.

Normalizing the idea

As a first-of-its-kind gathering of experts, the Humans to Titan Summit 2026 was invigorating, taking seriously the prospect of one day sending humans to Titan, said Amanda Hendrix, director of the Planetary Science Institute, which is headquartered in Tucson, Arizona.

Hendrix is also president of the advocacy group Explore Titan and co-author of "Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets" (Pantheon Books, 2016).

"Everyone recognizes that the reality of this is a long way off," Hendrix told Space.com, "but normalizing the idea   — that Titan is actually a very reasonable destination for humans  — is important."

Taking this goal seriously means that "we can have a next destination in our minds, after Mars," she added. "That keeps the momentum going."

Dense atmosphere

The assembly of experts explored an array of Titan topics, from spacesuits and modes of transportation, habitat designs and airlock concepts to light levels and possible encounters with monsoons and floods on the frigid, exotic moon, which has a weather system based on hydrocarbons rather than water.

Additionally, making use of Titan as a hub for launching sample-return missions to other moons within the Saturn system, like Enceladus, was viewed as a big plus.

So too was utilizing the moon's rich bounty of resources — like methane, nitrogen and oxygen — to fuel expansive, far-deeper exploration beyond Titan itself.

"We've got a lot of planning to do," said Hendrix, "but we have time!"

A top priority is figuring out how to either shorten the trip time to Titan or accommodate it and mitigate the negative effects on astronauts, Hendrix said.

"The top reason in my mind that Titan is such a good spot for humans is the dense atmosphere," Hendrix said. That nitrogen-dominated atmosphere provides natural shielding from harmful radiation of many types.

Precursor missions

Appreciation of what human visitors will face on the moon was boosted by the European Space Agency's robotic Huygens probe, which touched down on Titan on Jan. 14, 2005 as part of the NASA-ESA Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn.

Next up for setting down on Titan is NASA's nuclear-powered Dragonfly, now projected to launch no earlier than 2028 for a six-year voyage to the faraway moon.

During its over three-year surface mission, Dragonfly's rotors will carry it for miles across Titan's surface, auto-piloting its way to a variety of areas. The vehicle is designed to snag samples of surface material for analysis inside the rotorcraft by scientific instruments.

Extraordinarily ambitious

Taking part in the two-day gathering was Scot Rafkin, director of the Department of Space Studies at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) and a planetary and atmospheric scientist. The summit was held at SwRI's Solar System Science & Exploration Division facilities.

"Everyone recognized that sending humans to Titan is extraordinarily ambitious. But history shows that the greatest achievements in exploration begin when people are willing to pursue goals that seem beyond reach," said Rafkin. Sharing with Space.com his own personal thoughts, he said the summit marked "the beginning of a long-term effort to imagine and ultimately achieve something transformative."

Titan is one of the most compelling worlds in the solar system, Rafkin said; it's a place with rivers, lakes, weather, dunes and complex chemistry unlike anywhere else we know of. Pursuing human exploration of Titan, he said, creates a long-term framework and provides a scientific purpose that transcends the moon and Mars.

'Not a question of physics'

Rafkin said that targeting Titan will also accelerate technologies needed not only for exploring that moon but for voyaging throughout the solar system.

"Human exploration of Titan is not a question of physics," said Rafkin. "It is a question of time, technology, and commitment. We understand most of the major challenges. We know many of the critical science and engineering gaps that remain."

Every advance in propulsion, power systems, manufacturing, robotics, computing, life support and communications, Rafkin said, brings Titan closer while simultaneously enabling exploration throughout the solar system.

Not every solution exists today, Rafkin continued, but the path forward is increasingly clear.

Starting a movement

"Some steps can be taken now, such as sending an orbiter to better characterize the Titan system," said Rafkin. "Other capabilities will require decades or even generations of development. The challenge is immense, but it is achievable."

Rafkin said that the summit was not about planning a mission.

"It was about starting a movement. If space exploration has taught us anything, it is that ambitious goals accelerate innovation in ways we cannot fully predict. The destination is Titan, but the investment is in ourselves," Rafkin concluded.

A second Humans to Titan Summit, said Hendrix, is slated around the launch date in 2028 of the NASA Dragonfly mission.

Early risers on Wednesday morning (June 10) will be able to partake in an interesting rendezvous between the moon and a bright planet. Set your alarm for 3 a.m. and upon heading outside, look due east. Make sure you don't have any tall obstructions, such as trees or buildings, in your way. You'll first notice a fat waning crescent moon, two days past last quarter phase. At that hour, the moon will stand 10 degrees above the horizon, roughly the equivalent of the width of your fist.

Then, look about 5 degrees (half a fist) to the lower right of the moon and you'll see a rather bright "star" shining with a soft yellowish-white hue. Except that's not a star, but a planet.

The "Lord of the Rings" — Saturn.

If you are unable to see the moon and/or Saturn because trees or buildings are blocking your view, then wait another hour until the eastern sky has begun to light up with the break of dawn. By that time, both objects will have doubled their respective altitudes above the horizon and shifted toward the east-southeast.

Celestial pièce de résistance

For most amateur and professional astronomers, Saturn is the telescopic showpiece of the night sky. No photograph or verbal description can duplicate the thrill of seeing this ringed beauty through a telescope for yourself.

The generally accepted magnification for getting a glimpse of the rings is 30x, however, Murray Paulson, who edits the Planets and Satellites section of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada's Observer's Handbook comments that "The rings. . . are visible even in steadied (or image-stabilized) high power binoculars and small spotting scopes." Those rings consist of countless billions of particles, the bulk of which are tiny, measuring from about the size of a grain of sand up to car-sized boulders, though the largest boulders are estimated to range anywhere from 30 to 60 feet (9 to 18 meters) across. These particles are made of — or covered by — water ice. This would account for their exceedingly high reflectivity. The reason that "rings" is plural and not singular is that gaps and brightness differences define distinct rings; complex subsystems of rings within rings.

Coming attractions

In the weeks and months to come, Saturn will become increasingly more well-placed to observe in the sky as it rises a little earlier each night. Saturn started June within the boundaries of the non-zodiacal constellation of Cetus the Whale, then crossed into Pisces the Fishes on June 3. It will then come to a halt on June 27, after which it will begin a 4.5-month period of retrograde motion, causing it to move back into Cetus on Sept. 5, where it will remain for the balance of the year. It will arrive at opposition on Oct. 4, rising at sunset and well up in the south-southeast around midnight. It is the only bright star (but not superbright like Venus and Jupiter) in that region of the sky.

From now until 2039 (Jan. 22), the sun will be shining on the south face of the rings. As seen from the perspective of the sun, the rings will smoothly open out to a maximum of 26.96 degrees (widest open) on May 12, 2032, then smoothly close again. But as seen from here on Earth, the inclination angle will vacillate during the year because we (like Saturn) are moving around the sun and so we will view the planet from different angles. When 2026 began, the rings appeared nearly edge-on at an inclination of just 0.9 degrees. During June, the angle widens from 8.3 to 9.0 degrees. They'll reach a maximum of 9.1 degrees on Aug. 1, then will close to 6.1 degrees on Dec. 1.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, Sky and Telescope, The Old Farmer's Almanac and other publications.

The May new moon arrives this weekend, ushering in several dark moonless nights perfect for exploring the majesty of our Milky Way, glimmering spring constellations and the ever-shifting procession of the planets.

May's new moon phase occurs at 4:01 p.m. EDT (2001 GMT) on May 16, as the moon passes close to the sun in the daytime sky.

The nights surrounding the new moon present beautifully dark skies for stargazers looking to navigate the sea of stars, nebulas and galaxies that haunt the post-sunset realm.

Visible planets

Turn your gaze west at sunset to spot Venus glowing as a bright "evening star" a little over 20 degrees above the horizon — roughly the width of two clenched fists held at arm's length against the night sky.

Jupiter glows another 20 degrees to the upper left of Venus, with Castor and Pollux, the brightest stars in the constellation Gemini, shining above. A pair of 10X50 binoculars will reveal a shoal of star-like objects surrounding the gas giant. These are Jupiter's largest natural satellites Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto, which are collectively known as the Galilean Moons in honor of their discoverer, the famed Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei.

Early birds are treated to an entirely different cast of planets as Saturn shines above the eastern horizon in the hour preceding dawn, with Mars rising to its lower left, chased by the golden light of the coming sun. Both Saturn and Mars will cling less than 20 degrees above the horizon at sunrise, so be sure to find a spot with a clear view to the east if you want to catch the planetary duo before they're lost in the glare of the sun.

Stars and constellations

May's new moon is a great time to spot a trio of celestial animals shining in the spring sky. Our first target is the great lion represented in the constellation Leo, whose mane and chest are represented by a sickle-like formation of stars that shines above the southwestern horizon after sunset in May, with Regulus at its lowest point.

The second-century Greek philosopher Ptolemy catalogued the constellation almost 2,000 years ago, seeing in it the Nemean Lion from the mythological tale of Heracles, which the hero was burdened with slaying as the first of his 12 labors.

Next, look 10 degrees above Leo's sickle head to find the faint stars of the constellation Leo Minor, the "little lion". This constellation was created by the Polish astronomer Johannes Hevelius in the year 1690. As a result, there are no great mythological tales of its origin, though it remains a pretty feature between the greater stellar citadels of Leo and Ursa Major.

To the lower right of Leo Minor is the magnitude +3.25 star Alpha Lyncis, which forms the leftmost point of the constellation Lynx — a serpentine formation of eight stars that stretches off to the right above the northwestern horizon for viewers in the Northern Hemisphere. Dark skies surrounding the new moon make Lynx much easier to trace, as it is often hidden in the glare of Earth's satellite.

Our final target is the glowing core of the Milky Way, which puts on a magnificent show between midnight and dawn in mid-May, as it arcs high over the southeastern horizon. A good way to spot the Milky Way is by locating the three bright stars Altair, Vega and Deneb, forming a famous asterism known as the Summer Triangle above the eastern horizon this time of year

The dense starfield and dark interstellar dust clouds of the galactic core appear as a glowing band passing through Deneb and between Vega and Altair, as it tumbles towards the horizon.

Read more: Learn the night sky without an app: May's easiest star-hops for beginners

Natural light pollution will be at a minimum, so why not also try to head away from bright city lights to make the most of the monthly pocket of darkness? You can use a trusted website like DarkSky.org to find your ideal stargazing location, along with smartphone astronomy applications like Stellarium or Star Walk 2 to find — or identify — breathtaking night sky objects and constellations in the night sky.

Want to capture your own gorgeous views of our galaxy? Then be sure to read our beginner's guide to photographing the Milky Way, along with our roundups of the top cameras and lenses for astrophotography.

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your dark sky astrophotography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

Look to the eastern sky in the hour preceding dawn on May 14 to catch a rare sight, as the moon, Saturn and Mars form a cosmic triangle in the glow of the rising sun, while the ice giant Neptune lurks unseen nearby.

The 8%-lit waning crescent moon will sit low on the eastern horizon as dawn's glow creeps into the sky. Saturn will appear as a bright star-like object to the moon's lower right, while the reddish glow of Mars shines lower still to the left of the pair.

Neptune will also be present roughly 10 degrees to the right of the thin lunar crescent — roughly the width of a clenched fist held at arm's length against the sky — but will be far too dim to spot with the unaided eye.

Mars, Saturn and the moon will all be less than 20 degrees above the horizon at sunrise, so be sure to find a location with a clear view to the east to see them before they're swallowed in the golden light of dawn.

While the cosmic trio will make for a spectacular naked eye target, we advise against any attempt to view them with a telescope owing to their proximity to the rising sun. Remember, pointing a telescope or binoculars at the sun can result in permanent and immediate loss of sight.

In the coming nights, Earth's satellite will disappear from the predawn sky ahead of its new moon phase on May 16, while Mars and Saturn subtly drift away from one another among the stars of the constellation Pisces.

Be sure to read our roundups of the best lenses and cameras for astrophotography to ensure that you're ready to capture the next big planetary rendezvous, along with our beginner's guide to imaging the night sky.

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your astrophotography with Space.com's readers, then please send your image(s) and comments, along with your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

After "re-booting" the moon and establishing a base there, followed by dispatching expeditionary crews to Mars, where should humanity go?

Next month, a first-of-its-kind gathering will blueprint an eventual crewed trek to tantalizing Titan, the largest of Saturn's many moons. That inaugural "Humans to Titan Summit" will make the case for an astronaut outing to that far-off moon, detailing the science goals and concepts of human missions to Titan as well as necessary forerunner robotic efforts.

And there is already a robotic Titan mission on the books — NASA's nuclear-powered Dragonfly octocopter mission, which is targeted to launch in 2028. Could it help fuel a human leap?

Foundational talks

"It's not too soon to begin thinking about this," said Amanda Hendrix, director of the Planetary Science Institute, headquartered in Tucson, Arizona. She is also president of the advocacy group Explore Titan and co-author of "Beyond Earth: Our Path to a New Home in the Planets" (Pantheon Books, 2016).

"The idea of the summit is to bring together people from different communities — engineers, scientists, industry, academia, robotic and human spaceflight experts," Hendrix told Space.com. "We're having foundational talks about what precursor missions do we need in order to get us on the road to Titan, eventually with humans."

Hendrix noted that, after Apollo's last human foray to the moon in 1972, there was a gap of decades, a lull in launching astronauts beyond Earth orbit — a pause just filled by NASA's recent Artemis 2 mission, which sent four astronauts around the moon and back to Earth.

"Now we are, hopefully, back on track [with] humans going to the moon, with NASA talking about Mars as the next human destination," said Hendrix. "I think having a concept in our mind after Mars can guide our thinking, give us a path and keep us motivated for the future."

Visits, past and future

The Saturn moon has had visitors already. On Jan. 14, 2005, the European Space Agency's robotic Huygens probe — part of the NASA-ESA Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn — touched down on Titan.

Making a 2.5-hour descent through Titan's atmosphere, the Huygens probe provided a stream of data for 72 minutes once on the moon's surface. It set the still-standing record as the most distant landing from Earth.

"Huygens showed us many things," Hendrix said. She cited the dynamics of Titan's atmosphere, the look of its surface — which features water-ice "rocks," dry river beds, lakes and dunes — as well as the overall haziness at the landing locale.

"It does look otherworldly," Hendrix said.

Next up for Titan is Dragonfly, now scheduled to launch no earlier than 2028 for a six-year voyage to Titan. Once landed, the craft will spend three years flying from spot to spot to investigate a range of sites, perhaps revealing its potential to host life.

A dynamic world

"Dragonfly is an awesome, super-important mission to a fascinating and active world," said Hendrix. "Titan is not a static place. It is a dynamic world," she said, "probably a place that's very close to an early-Earth kind of environment."

Dragonfly will give us a leg up in the effort to send humans to Titan, Hendrix said, "but there's still a lot to do and learn."

"Ultimately, we're trying to get humans on the surface and living there. I think that's doable in the long-term, for sure," she said. A precursor mission might involve robotic orbiting of Titan — perhaps even a human crew circuiting the Saturn moon. Radar and infrared scanning of its surface could be done, she said, along with gauging what impact Titan's changing seasons have on the moon's atmosphere.

"A lot can be done, and should be done, robotically. But with humans on the surface, there's work only humans can do," Hendrix said.

Surmountable issues

So, how best to strut the right stuff on Titan?

First, there's more atmospheric pressure than here on Earth. "You don't need a pressure suit like you do on the moon or Mars. What you do need to do is keep warm. It's very cold there. There's also a little more gravity than the Earth's moon," said Hendrix.

Because of Titan's atmosphere, "you can strap wings to your arms and move through the atmosphere under your own power, or strap on a jet pack and power yourself around. You've got that atmosphere and low gravity. There are many options for transport on Titan, which Dragonfly is taking advantage of," Hendrix said.

Also, you'd have to make your own oxygen, Hendrix said, which is not available in Titan's thick, nitrogen atmosphere laced with methane. A Titan-based habitat would need a power source. And, given the precipitation of molecules and gunk that rains down and settles on the surface, there's a need to protect equipment, she said.

"This is all surmountable," said Hendrix, saying that Dragonfly and other precursor missions could yield information useful for human visits to Titan.

The Humans to Titan Summit 2026 is being held June 11-12 in Boulder, Colorado. The goal is "to explore the concept of Titan as the next human exploration destination after Mars, how it could be done and what we would need to do now," according to the event's website.

"We want the workshop to invigorate the community to think about what we need to do and what the possibilities are … to plant the seed that this is a real possibility," Hendrix concluded.

The April new moon has arrived bringing several nights of spectacular dark skies perfect for observing the planets of the solar system, majestic constellations and the galaxies that lie beyond.

April's new moon occurs at 7:52 a.m. EDT (1152 GMT) on April 17, when the moon is positioned between the sun and Earth, rendering it lost from sight in the daytime sky, with the entirety of its near side bathed in shadow.

The moonless nights surrounding this phase are the perfect time to indulge in skywatching and night sky photography, as subtle constellations and deep sky objects often lost behind a veil of moonlight glisten in the twilight realm.

Visible planets

Look to the west shortly after sunset on April 17 to find Venus appearing as a bright evening star 15 degrees from the horizon, with the blue-white stars of the Pleiades open star cluster glowing 10 degrees above — roughly the width of your clenched fist held at arm's length.

The ice giant Uranus can be found a little under 5 degrees to the lower left of the star cluster. It'll be too dim to spot with the naked eye — without exceptionally dark skies and perfect vision — but a pair of binoculars or a small telescope will allow you to spot its disk as a tiny greenish dot, according to telescope manufacturer Celestron.

Jupiter, meanwhile, will shine high overhead, below Castor and Pollux — the brightest stars of the constellation Gemini. Turn a 6-inch telescope on Jupiter and you may notice a line of bright dots extending outward from the gas giant's colorful disk. Those are the Galilean moons Io, Ganymede, Europa and Callisto!

Head out an hour before sunrise on April 18 and find yourself a clear view to the eastern horizon for a chance to catch a planetary triangle rising in the glow of the coming dawn.

Mars will sit higher in the sky,with Saturn below and Mercury off to the right. Neptune will also be present to the upper right of Mercury, though the distant ice giant will be far too dim to spot with the naked eye.

Stars and constellations

The dark nights surrounding the new moon are a perfect time to explore some of the subtler constellations that glisten in the northern hemisphere sky.

First, locate the sickle-like formation of stars representing the head and chest of the great lion represented in the constellation Leo, which can be found high above the southern horizon in April with the bright star Regulus at its base.

Next, look to the lower right of Regulus to find a circlet of stars representing the head of the great serpent in the constellation Hydra, along with a string of stars that wind down and to the east towards the horizon, which mark its tail. Hydra is the largest constellation in the night sky, though it's often overlooked due to its lack of bright stars.

Perched along Hydra's back are the compact constellations Corvus (the crow) and Crater (the cup). To their east is the blue-white light of Spica — the brightest star in the constellation Virgo.

For a spot of deep sky viewing, why not head out to a dark sky location and sweep your telescope over the patch of sky where Leo, Virgo and the constellation Coma Berenices meet?

First, find Denebola, the star that marks the tail of the lion in Leo, and Vindemiatrix using a handy stargazing app. Roughly halfway between the two is Markarian's Chain — a spectacular string of galaxies whose ancient light can be spied with the aid of a modest telescope.

Read more: Galaxy season: Spring brings deep space wonder to the northern hemisphere night sky.

You could also capture spectacular images of the stars with the help of our beginner's guide to photographing the night sky. Be sure to check out our picks of the best telescopes and binoculars for exploring the night sky, along with our roundups of the top cameras and lenses for astrophotography available in 2026.

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your night sky photography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s) along with your name, location and comments to spacephotos@space.com.

If you're looking for the best waves in the solar system, Saturn's moon Titan could be your ideal extraterrestrial surfing spot, where a gentle breeze that merely raises a ripple on Earth could drive waves 10 feet (3 meters) tall on the frigid world.

A new model called "PlanetWaves" has been developed by researchers to accurately describe what waves in bodies of liquid on other worlds may look like. Previous attempts at doing so focused only on the gravity of a planet, but PlanetWaves also applies atmospheric pressure and the nature of the liquid being blown — its density, viscosity and surface tension, which quantifies the liquid's resistance to rippling.

"That was the big leap with this project," said lead author Una Schneck, who is a Ph.D. student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), in a statement.

Schneck's team calibrated their PlanetWaves model on 20 years' worth of data collected by buoys on Lake Superior, which is Earth's largest freshwater lake and is situated on the border between Canada and the United States. The model was able to replicate the measurements precisely, giving the researchers confidence in then applying it to other worlds.

"On Earth, we get accustomed to certain wave dynamics," Andrew Ashton of MIT and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution said in the statement. "But with this model, we can see how waves behave on planets with different liquids, atmospheres and gravity, which can kind of challenge our intuition."

Saturn's largest moon Titan was their primary focus, simply because it is the only other world that we know for sure has bodies of liquid on its surface, with its rivers, lakes and seas being mapped by the Cassini–Huygens mission.

However, Titan's liquid is not water, but rather oily hydrocarbons such as methane and ethane, rendered liquid only due to the exceedingly cold temperatures of –179 degrees Celsius (–290 degrees Fahrenheit).

"For Titan, the tantalizing thing is that we don't have any direct observations of what these lakes look like," said MIT's Taylor Perron said in the statement. "So we don't know for sure what kind of waves might exist there. Now this model gives us an idea."

The team found that a light wind could raise waves 10 feet high in Titan's lakes, thanks to Titan's low gravity, which is 14% the strength of gravity on Earth, and the relatively light nature of the liquid which makes it easier to move.

"It kind of looks like tall waves moving in slow motion," said Schneck. "If you were standing on the shore of this lake, you might feel only a soft breeze but you would see these enormous waves flowing toward you, which is not what we would expect on Earth."

As waves batter coasts they are the source of considerable erosion. Could Titan's giant waves potentially answer a puzzle that has persisted about the nature of Titan's lakes and shorelines?

"Unlike on Earth where there is often a delta where a river meets the coast, on Titan there are very few things that look like deltas even though there are plenty of rivers and coasts," said Taylor Perron, also of MIT. "Could waves be responsible for this?"

Understanding the size of Titan's waves will also be important should one of our space agencies ever decide to send a probe to float on one of Titan's lakes or seas.

"You would want to build something that can withstand the energy of the waves, so it's important to know what kind of waves these instruments would be up against," said Schneck.

The team also applied their PlanetWaves model to a variety of other worlds. Mars doesn't seem to have liquid water anymore, but billions of years ago it did. Over time Mars lost much of its atmosphere, and the air pressure and temperature dropped. As this happened, it would have required stronger winds to raise waves whereas weaker winds would have sufficed before.

Beyond the solar system, there are a variety of worlds that could support liquids of some kind, though so far none have been confirmed to actually have liquids. Nevertheless, the habitable zone planet LHS 1140b has a density that suggests up to 19% of its mass is water in some form. As a super-Earth with stronger gravity than our planet, waves on any hypothetical ocean would be much smaller than on Earth for the same wind speed.

More exotic is the exoplanet Kepler-1649b, which is a hot Venus-like world with similar gravity to Earth. Venus has copious amounts of sulfuric acid in its atmosphere, and Kepler-1649b might have too. If that sulfuric acid can exist on the planet's surface, then it would require strong winds just to cause the acid lake to ripple because sulfuric acid is twice as dense as liquid water.

The last exoplanet they employed PlanetWaves on was 55 Cancri e, which is a hot world quite possibly covered with lakes of lava. Since lava is generally quite thick and viscous, and 55 Cancri e's gravity is stronger than Earth's, it would take hurricane force winds in the region of 80 miles per hour just to cause a ripple on the lava ocean.

The findings were published on April 3rd in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

Saturn has a lopsided magnetic field, far different from the mostly even magnetosphere of Earth, new research suggests. The ringed gas giant's wonky magnetic shield may be the result of its rapid rotation (a day on Saturn lasts just 10.7 hours), and the effects of its moons, especially the icy ocean moon Enceladus.

The team behind this research reached these findings when they examined six years of data regarding Saturn collected by the Cassini spacecraft, which orbited the gas giant between 2004 and 2017. The aim of this research was to discover where the magnetic field lines of Saturn start to curve back into the planet’s poles, where they funnel charged particles down into the atmosphere, a point known as the "magnetic cusp."

The team found that Saturn's magnetic cusp is dragged to the right as seen from the sun. In terms of a clock face, Earth's magnetic cusp is at 12, while Saturn's is at 1 or 3. The discovery could be an important one for future spacecraft missions to the Saturnian system that aim to discover if its icy moon Enceladus is capable of supporting life in its global ocean.

"A better understanding of Saturn’s environment is especially urgent now as plans for our return to Saturn and its moon Enceladus start to be developed," team member Andrew Coates of University College of London's Mullard Space Science Laboratory said in a statement. "These results feed into the excitement that we are going back there. This time we will look for evidence of habitability and for potential signs of life."

Enceladus is such a drag

Saturn is the second-largest planet in the solar system after Jupiter, and the Saturnian magnetic field is ten times as wide as the gas giant itself. This new research determined that its uneven nature is the result of the planet's rapid rotation and the fact that, as it spins, Saturn drags a heavy soup of plasma around with it.

This matter is the result of gases emitted by the Saturnian moons, particularly Enceladus, which is known to spray out icy plumes that originate from its subsurface ocean.

"This study also provides critical evidence for a long-held theory – that the rapid spin of massive planets like Saturn with active moons replaces the solar wind as the dominant force shaping magnetospheres. It shows that Saturn’s magnetosphere, as well as the magnetospheres of other rapidly spinning gas giants, likely differ fundamentally from Earth's," Coates said. "Enceladus itself is a key driver of this environment, releasing huge amounts of water vapour that gets ionised, loading the magnetosphere with heavy plasma that is then pulled around as the planet spins.”

Team leader Zhonghua Yao of the University of Hong Kong explained that the differences between the structure of the Saturnian magnetic field and that of Earth's magnetosphere point to a unified fundamental process that governs how outflows of charged particles from the sun, known as the solar wind, interact with different planets.

This discovery could be vital in understanding how winds from other stars interact with planets beyond the solar system.

"Comprehensive terrestrial observations reveal the working mechanisms of Earth, while comparative studies between planets inform us of the fundamental laws that can be applied to understand other systems, such as exoplanets," Yao said.

Particularly useful for Yao and colleagues was data from two of Cassini's instruments, the Cassini Magnetometer (MAG) and the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS), both of which detected incidents during which the spacecraft passed through Saturn's magnetic cusp.
This revealed 67 such occasions between 2004 and 2010.

Using this to simulate the shape of Saturn's magnetic field, the team found that the way the solar wind interacts with the ringed planet's magnetosphere is similar to interactions with the magnetic field of its fellow gas giant, Jupiter.

The team's research was published on Wednesday (April 1) in the journal Nature Communications.

Saturn's iconic rings may be the shattered remains of a long-lost moon — and the same catastrophic event could also explain why the planet is tilted, according to new research.

Results presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas which ran between March 10 and 14 suggest a hypothetical moon called Chrysalis may have ventured too close to Saturn roughly 100 million years ago, where powerful tidal forces stripped away the moon's icy outer layers. Some of that debris may have remained in orbit and eventually collided and spread out to form the complex ring system we see today.

The findings, led by Yifei Jiao of the University of California, Santa Cruz, are the latest in a growing body of evidence pointing to a solution to two long-standing puzzles, Saturn's present-day tilt and why its rings appear far younger than the planet itself, which formed more than 4.5 billion years ago.

"We don't know if there was a previous ring before this happens," Jiao told Space.com. But even if there wasn't, he said, the scenario can still produce an ice-rich ring system consistent with the mass of Saturn's current rings.

Additionally, it "can clearly explain why Saturn's rings are young," he said during his presentation.

The new work builds on similar findings of a 2022 study led by Jack Wisdom at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which proposed that Saturn once hosted an additional moon — Chrysalis — that played a crucial role in shaping the planet's tilt.

The gas giant is tilted by about 26.7 degrees, and scientists have long suspected this is linked to a gravitational resonance with Neptune — meaning the two planets were once in a kind of orbital rhythm, with Neptune's repeated gravitational tugs helping set Saturn's tilt. In that earlier work, scientists said Chrysalis orbited Saturn for billions of years, helping maintain that alignment.

But sometime between 100 million and 200 million years ago, the moon's orbit became unstable, and a series of gravitational interactions sent Chrysalis on a fatal, grazing encounter with Saturn. Most of the moon would have been destroyed or fell into the planet, but a small fraction of debris remained in orbit, resulting in the raw material for Saturn's rings, scientists suggest.

Using computer simulations to model the breakup in detail, Jiao's team found that Saturn's tidal forces would have preferentially stripped away the moon's icy mantle while leaving much of its rocky core intact. That distinction naturally explains why Saturn's rings are composed almost entirely of water ice, with very little rock, the study notes.

The stripped material was then shaped by gravitational interactions with large moons such as Titan, which could have removed as much as 70% of the initial ring mass over time. This suggests the original ring system may have been several times more massive than it is today.

Scientists are still investigating what ultimately happened to Chrysalis' surviving core, and whether debris from the event may have left traces elsewhere in Saturn's system — such as unusual impact features on icy moons that could perhaps be detected by future spacecraft.

Stunning new views of Saturn offer the most detailed portrait yet of the ringed planet, showcasing the combined power of NASA's most advanced space telescopes.

Using observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Hubble Space Telescope, astronomers have created the most comprehensive look at Saturn to date, blending infrared, visible and ultraviolet light into a single, richly layered image, according to a statement from NASA.

"Together, scientists can effectively 'slice' through Saturn's atmosphere at multiple altitudes, like peeling back the layers of an onion," NASA officials said in the statement. "Each telescope tells a different part of Saturn's story, and the observations together help researchers understand how Saturn's atmosphere works as a connected three-dimensional system."

Each space telescope brings a distinct perspective. Hubble captures crisp, long-term visible-light views of Saturn's cloud bands and atmospheric changes, while the JWST peers deeper into the planet's atmosphere in infrared, revealing heat patterns and structures hidden beneath the upper cloud layers.

The Hubble data, captured in August 2024 as part of the long-running Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program, was followed about 14 weeks later by Webb observations taken through Director's Discretionary Time, showing Saturn shifting from northern summer toward its 2025 equinox. Saturn's long seasonal cycles — each lasting about seven Earth years — also provide important context for interpreting changes in the planet's atmosphere and rings over time.

Together, the observations present Saturn as a layered and dynamic world. Hubble's visible-light view shows the planet's softly banded atmosphere, while Webb's infrared observations reveal additional structure, including deeper atmospheric layers, a meandering jet stream in the northern mid-latitudes, possible auroral activity, and several storms scattered across the southern hemisphere.

The combined data highlights how Saturn's appearance changes across different wavelengths, offering a more complete view of its atmosphere, according to the NASA statement.

The images also provide complementary views of Saturn's rings. In Hubble's data, the rings, made of water ice, appear bright in reflected sunlight, with clearly defined structure. In Webb's infrared view, the rings shine even more prominently, standing out against the darker background of space and revealing additional detail in the ring system.

Subtle differences between the telescopes' views also reveal ring features like spokes and structure in the thick central region, as well as differing perspectives of the outer ring, which appears thin and sharply defined in Webb's image but only faintly visible in Hubble's, according to the statement.

Seasonal context adds further value to the observations. Hubble's OPAL program has been tracking changes in the outer planets for more than a decade, providing a long-term record of Saturn's atmosphere. The new Webb observations build on that dataset, offering a broader, multiwavelength perspective as the planet continues its progression toward its next equinox.

The new dataset underscores the power of combining multiple observatories. By integrating Webb's infrared sensitivity with Hubble's long-standing visible-light record, scientists can construct a far more complete picture of planetary behavior than either telescope could achieve alone.

As both observatories continue their missions, researchers plan to build on these observations, tracking Saturn's evolving atmosphere, monitoring storm systems and refining models of its complex climate. With this new composite view, Saturn isn't just a distant gas giant — it's a dynamic world whose hidden layers are finally coming into focus.

Entering a planet's atmosphere is a dangerous maneuver for any spacecraft, as it must withstand the intense frictional heat generated by high-speed contact with atoms and molecules.

That's why landers and rovers have heat shields. And new research from the Grainger College of Engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign suggests that an atmosphere's composition has a big impact on how heat shields work.

A heat shield "breathes" when it hits the atmosphere. The surface of the shield begins to burn away, in a process called ablation. To mimic the hypersonic speed of a spacecraft's entry, a team of researchers led by Francesco Panerai, a professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, experimented with heat shields in the Plasmatron X wind tunnel at the Center for Hypersonics and Entry System Studies, which is housed a few blocks from the university's campus.

"What was very surprising about the study is that, when we changed the gas, the ablation phenomenon behaved in different ways," Panerai said in a March 12 statement. "In a classical air environment where you have oxygen present, the ablation happens in a steady way. The flow around the spacecraft erodes the surface, and particles get ejected as a constant stream."

When material from the outer layer of the heat shield erodes, some of it can collect on the surface of the shield, potentially clogging up some areas and preventing the material below from "breathing." This can impact how well the shield performs. In the new study, the researchers found that changing the gases that the shield comes into contact with also changes its performance.

"When the oxygen is removed, this phenomenon becomes unsteady. Intermittent bursts of particles are ejected and, at times, the process becomes violent," Panerai said. "I've been around ablation research for over 15 years, and I've never seen this. We were all really surprised when we first observed this behavior in the tunnel."

Understanding how an atmosphere's composition affects heat shields is important, Panerai said, because NASA is getting Dragonfly, a robotic rotorcraft, ready for a 2028 launch toward the huge Saturn moon Titan. Titan has a thick atmosphere that's quite different from that of Earth: It's composed of about 95% nitrogen and 5% methane, whereas ours is 78% nitrogen and 21% oxygen.

Dragonfly will study Titan's surface, which could give scientists clues on whether or not the moon's hydrocarbon lakes and rivers hold molecules that are a precursor for life.

"Although this work doesn't directly influence heat shield design, it does have very profound implications on the physics of the material — on the way the material behaves at extreme temperatures," Panerai says. "Understanding at what conditions this phenomenon becomes prominent in flight can help us design better heat shields."

The study was published Feb. 5 in the science journal Carbon.

A multitude of new moons have made their presence known around Jupiter and Saturn, bringing their population of moons to 101 and 285, respectively.

The new discoveries also bring the total number of known moons orbiting planets and dwarf planets in the solar system to 442 — and that's not including the many moonlets accompanying various asteroids or small Kuiper Belt objects.

The newly found moons — four for Jupiter and 11 for Saturn — were announced by the Minor Planet Center, which is the clearing house for astronomical discoveries of asteroids, comets, centaurs and, indeed, moons.

None of the newly discovered moons are very large, averaging about 1.9 miles (3 kilometers) in diameter. They have very wide orbits, far wider than the larger moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and are exceedingly faint, between magnitude 25 and 27. (For context, our moon sits at magnitude -12.6.) This puts them well beyond the range of backyard telescopes.

Instead, it took intense observations from some of our largest ground-based telescopes to snag them. The four new moons of Jupiter were all found by astronomers Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science and David Tholen of the University of Hawaii, using the 6.5 meter Magellan–Baade telescope at Las Campanas Observatory in Chile and the 8-meter Subaru telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

Meanwhile, the 11 new moons of Saturn were uncovered thanks to a team led by Edward Ashton at the Academia Sinica Institute of Astronomy and Astrophysics in Taiwan. They used the 3.5-meter Canada–France–Hawaii Telescope on Mauna Kea. This comes after Ashton led a team to discover 128 new moons of Saturn as recently as 2025.

Both Sheppard and Ashton in particular are prodigious discoverers of moons in the solar system, with over 200 each to their name, many of them being co-discoveries.

While Jupiter is lagging behind Saturn in the moon stakes by quite a large number, Europa Clipper and the Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) missions, currently heading to Jupiter, could redress the balance when they arrive in the Jovian system in the early 2030s.

To summarize, the current tally is that for the planets, Earth has one moon, Mars has two, Jupiter has 101, Saturn has 285, Uranus has 28 and Neptune has 16 while Venus and Mercury have none. For the dwarf planets, Pluto has five, Eris has one, Makemake has one, Haumea has two and Ceres has none.

The new moons of Jupiter were announced in Minor Planet Electronic Circulars MPEC 2026-F09, F10, F11 and F12, and the 11 new moons of Saturn were declared in MPEC 2026-F14.

What if I told you that our very own Earth holds a secret, a cosmic clue to understanding one of the most enigmatic worlds in our solar system? It sounds wild, I know. But imagine a place far, far away, shrouded in a thick, nitrogen-rich haze, where methane rains down and carves out rivers, lakes, and seas.

No, I'm not describing some alien fantasy novel, I'm talking about Titan, Saturn's largest moon, which happens to share some truly remarkable geophysical and geological processes with our home planet. It's like finding a long-lost cousin who somehow ended up living in a completely different neighborhood, but still has all the same quirky habits.

But how can two worlds, so fundamentally different in temperature and composition, possibly be so alike? That's the cosmic puzzle we're trying to crack.

Titan is a frozen world, colder than anything we see on Earth, with a crust of ice and organics, not rock. How could anything here possibly tell us about that place? And you wouldn't be wrong to be skeptical. For a long time, there's been a perfectly reasonable hesitation in the scientific community about whether we could actually find useful Earth analogs for a world so distinct in its temperature and material makeup. It's like trying to compare a popsicle to a planet.

But here's where the story gets really interesting, and where the cleverness of researchers shines. See, even with those big differences, a team of scientists has been looking at our own world with fresh eyes. Their insight: there's actually a much wider range of analog fieldwork possible right here on Earth than we ever bothered to consider, according to a new paper appearing in the preprint journal arXiv.

Field analog research, in its simplest form, is all about poking around natural sites on Earth that mimic environments or processes we see on other planets. It's a way to test our gear, prove our instruments, and gather vital data on how things work in extreme environments before we send expensive spacecraft zipping across the solar system. And what they've found is pretty astounding.

Titan, with its thick nitrogen atmosphere and methane acting as a condensible gas, drives an active meteorology that leads to rainfall and surface features like rivers, lakes, and even seas. Sound familiar? It should. We see the echoes of these same dynamic processes on Earth.

Imagine a world where entire landscapes are shaped by the flow of liquids, where shorelines emerge and recede, and geological features like karstic terrain — the kind we see carved by water on Earth — are instead sculpted by hydrocarbons. These Earth-Titan parallels aren't just neat coincidences; they're direct insights into how complex planetary surfaces evolve, giving us a secret laboratory right under our feet.

This newfound appreciation for Earth's 'Titan-like' spots is absolutely critical for the future of space exploration, especially for missions like NASA's upcoming Dragonfly. This amazing rotorcraft lander, set to touch down on Titan in 2036, is designed to hop around and investigate the moon's prebiotic chemistry, habitability, and even search for potential chemical biosignatures. Dragonfly has a specific traverse target: the 50-mile-wide (80 kilometers) Selk Crater, a place where scientists hope to find evidence of liquid water mixing with surface organics.

And that's where our terrestrial analogs come in. They serve as indispensable tools for 'ground-truthing' the astrobiological studies, allowing us to test our theories and refine our instruments here at home before they get to work billions of miles away. Our Earth-based detective work will greatly enhance our ability to understand the datasets Dragonfly sends back.

The universe is full of surprises, and sometimes, the answers to our biggest questions about distant worlds are waiting for us right here on Earth. The journey to understand Titan, to uncover its secrets and assess its potential for life, is a continuous one. It's a grand scientific endeavor, driven by curiosity and cleverness, and it reminds us that every piece of knowledge we gain, whether from a field site on Earth or a rotorcraft soaring over an alien landscape, adds another brushstroke to the breathtaking canvas of cosmic discovery.

And there's always, always, more to explore.

NASA is one step closer to sending a drone mission to another world.

Technicians at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland have begun building and testing the nuclear-powered Dragonfly rotorcraft, which will launch toward the huge Saturn moon Titan in 2028.

"This milestone essentially marks the birth of our flight system," Elizabeth Turtle, Dragonfly principal investigator at APL, said in a NASA statement on Tuesday (March 10).

"Building a first-of-its kind vehicle to fly across another ocean world in our solar system pushes us to the edge of what's possible, but that's exactly why this stage is so exciting," Turtle added. "The team is doing an outstanding job, and every component we install and every test we run brings us one step closer to launching Dragonfly to Titan."

The car-sized Dragonfly will be the second rotorcraft to explore the skies of a world beyond Earth. The first was NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity, whose fuselage was only the size of a tissue box. The solar-powered Ingenuity was designed for just a handful of hops but survived an ambitious flight campaign that lasted nearly three years, from April 2021 to January 2024.

Building on what NASA learned, Dragonfly will be bigger — and powered by nuclear energy, not the sun. The Titan drone is also a full mission, costing about $3.35 billion; Ingenuity was a technology demonstrator with a price tag of just $85 million.

Dragonfly is expected to launch in 2028 toward Titan, the largest moon of Saturn and second-largest satellite in the solar system, behind Jupiter's Ganymede. Titan is thought to be rich in the precursor molecules of life as we know it, which makes it an exciting target for scientists, but it has been studied up close just once — by the European Huygens lander, which survived for a few hours in Titan's skies and on its surface on Jan. 14, 2005.

After touching down on Titan, Dragonfly aims to "explore a range of diverse sites to study the chemistry, geology and atmosphere of the terrestrial moon and ultimately advance our understanding of life's chemical origins," NASA officials stated. But first, the mission needs to be readied for space.

At APL, the first weeks of testing will focus on the spacecraft's integrated electronics module — a sort of "brain" for the mission that focuses on items like guidance, navigation and data handling — and power-switching units.

Testing and integration is expected to continue into early 2027. The spacecraft will next be shipped to Lockheed Martin Space in Littleton, Colorado for systems testing, before a brief return to APL to assess how Dragonfly will do in the space environment. APL will send Dragonfly to NASA's Kennedy Space Center no earlier than spring 2028, to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.

Dragonfly's protective shell for flying through space is also being tested: the shell finished aerodynamic assessments in wind tunnels at NASA's Langley Research Center in Virginia and is now in the integration and testing stage at Lockheed Martin. APL is also assessing insulating foam intended to keep Dragonfly from freezing in Titan's frigid atmosphere, and other items like the science payload and flight radio are also coming together.

While several years lie between now and launch, entering the build-and-test phase is a big milestone.

"We've spent years designing and refining this amazing rotorcraft on computer screens and in laboratories, and now we get to bring all those elements together and transform Dragonfly into an actual flight system," Annette Dolbow, the Dragonfly integration and test lead at APL, said in the same statement.

NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory has transformed new telescope views of Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus from this month's "planetary parade" into striking soundscapes — capturing everything from Jupiter's crackling auroras to the sweeping arc of Saturn's rings.

The newly released sonifications translate X-ray and multiwavelength observations of the three outer worlds into immersive audio experiences, turning streams of data from the space telescope into layered musical compositions. Timed to coincide with the rare alignment of several bright planets in the night sky, the project continues Chandra's broader effort to observe the universe through more than just sight, according to a statement from NASA sharing the new sonifications.

Sonification is the process of converting data into sound by mapping brightness, position and energy to pitch, volume and instrument choice. The process begins with real data collected by Chandra, which detects high-energy radiation produced when solar X-rays are reflected by planets, moons and other bodies in the solar system. Those observations are then combined with imagery from other observatories, including the Hubble Space Telescope and past planetary missions, to build a fuller, multiwavelength portrait.

A digital "activation line" then sweeps across the image. As it encounters bright auroras, planetary disks or rings, the data values are translated into sound. Brighter X-ray emissions may become higher or louder notes, while vertical position can shift pitch and stereo placement.

"Sonifications expand options for people to explore what telescopes discover in space, an example of NASA's ongoing commitment to share its data as widely as possible," officials said in the statement.

In Jupiter's sonification, shimmering, wind-like tones evoke the giant planet's powerful X-ray auroras, while deeper notes roll underneath like distant thunder, reflecting the turbulence of its striped atmosphere and cloud layers. Saturn's rings sweep in rising and falling siren-like tones, while deep bass notes represent the planet itself. Uranus unfolds more subtly, with gentler, cello sounds that trace the icy planet's arcing ring, mirroring its cooler, more subdued presence at the edge of the planetary lineup.

Previous sonifications have drawn on observations of the Milky Way, distant galaxies, stars, supernovae, nebulae and black holes. One example, based on the famous black hole in Messier 87, translates its powerful jets into sweeping changes in pitch and intensity, followed by lower, sustained tones representing vast clouds of hot gas, with brief, bell-like notes marking individual stars.

Just as astronomers assign visible colors to otherwise invisible wavelengths to make images comprehensible, sonification gives numerical data distinct sonic qualities. Mapping the planets' crackle, sweep and hum into different tones brings the solar system to life through both sight and sound.

Jupiter, Saturn, Venus, Neptune, Uranus and Mercury are staring in a "planetary parade" this week, but your ability to actually spot them will depend on preparation, equipment and, as always, a spot of luck with the weather.

Most of this week's naked-eye planetary action will take place low in the western sky, which is where the aforementioned preparation comes in. Be sure to stake out a raised location with a clear view of the horizon well ahead of time — you can use a smartphone stargazing app to figure out exactly where the planets will be in your local environment, so there's no need to guess.

Do so, and you'll be granted a rare, if challenging opportunity to spot Mercury shining 10 degrees — roughly the width of your clenched fist held at arm's length — above the late winter skyline, with Venus close to its left, floundering in the glow of the setting sun. Saturn, meanwhile, will glow less than 10 degrees to the upper left of Venus, with a distant cousin lurking nearby, but more on that later.

Mercury and Venus will follow the sun out of sight roughly an hour after sunset, briefly becoming more visible as the sky darkens and they grow closer to the horizon. Jupiter, meanwhile, will shine high in the eastern sky, with the waxing gibbous moon below, obscuring the stars of the constellation Cancer with its reflected light.

The next two planets will need a little added magnification to spot — and even then, you'll have the odds stacked against you.

The ice giant Neptune will be positioned two degrees to the right of Saturn, but will be too dim to spot with the unaided eye. Under dark skies, a telescope with an aperture of 8 inches (200 millimeters) or more can reveal its tiny bluish disk. However its position low on the horizon and close to the glare of our parent star will make it a challenge to spot on the nights surrounding Feb. 28. As always the utmost care must be taken to ensure that the sun is firmly below the horizon before pointing telescopic equipment in its general direction.

Uranus, meanwhile, can be found by sweeping your scope across the patch of sky 5 degrees below the Pleiades open star cluster, to the right of the "V" formation of stars in the constellation Taurus in the hours following sunset. Again, those new to the night sky may want to use a smartphone astronomy app, which makes use of augmented reality technology to help you pinpoint everything from constellations and planets to galaxies and meteor shower radiants.

Award-winning night sky photographer Josh Dury grappled with the sheer scope of the scene along with the glow of the setting sun and other challenges to capture a gorgeous long exposure view of the planetary parade earlier this week as it brightened the sky over the south of England.

For more, check out our handy guide on the equipment needed to see and photograph the planets. If you're into photography, then why not also read our roundups of the best cameras and lenses for capturing the night sky?

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your planetary astrophotography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

Look to the western horizon at sunset on Feb. 20 to witness an incredible sight, as three planets shine below the slender crescent of the waxing moon, with Jupiter glowing high overhead in the winter sky.

The upturned sickle-shape of the 18%-lit moon will appear 40 degrees above the horizon as the sun sets, with a string of bright "evening stars" representing Venus, Mercury and Saturn arrayed beneath, fighting for attention in the glow of the setting sun.

Saturn will be positioned 15 degrees directly below the crescent moon, with Mercury less than 10 degrees— roughly the width of your clenched fist held at arm's length — to its lower right. Mercury is currently in prime viewing position, having just passed its point of greatest eastern elongation on Feb. 19, when it was at its furthest from the sun in Earth's sky in its current evening apparition.

Find a spot with a clear view to the west for a chance to see Venus shining directly below Mercury, less than 10 degrees above the horizon at sunset. Neptune will also be present less than 1 degree — approximately the width of your little finger — to the right of Saturn, though it'll be too dim to spot with the naked eye.

Neptune is so distant that the blue spec of its disk can only be seen with the aid of an 8-inch telescope, but utmost care must be taken to ensure that the sun is well below the horizon before pointing any telescopic equipment in its direction.

Uranus, meanwhile, will be five degrees below the Pleiades on Feb. 20 and while technically just bright enough to spot with the naked eye from a dark sky location, the planet will also benefit from the magnifying power of a telescope to spot its tiny aqua disk.

Jupiter dominates the sky this time of year and can be found high in the east at sunset, glowing with the bright stars Castor and Pollux in the constellation Gemini. A 6-inch telescope will reveal details in the cloud bands lining its surface, along with its four largest moons, Io, Ganymede, Europa and Callisto.

The lunar crescent will also make for a fascinating telescopic target, just three days out from its new moon phase on Feb. 17. Look out for the dark forms of Mare Crisium and Mare Fecunditatis darkening the sunlit wedge of Earth's satellite, which formed when ancient lava flows flooded networks of impact craters before hardening many millions of years ago.

Next, sweep your telescope across the line separating night from day on the lunar surface — known as the terminator — to spot a myriad of shadowed impact craters scarring the lunar surface.

Want to explore the planets of the solar system for yourself? Then be sure to read our roundup of the best telescopes available in 2026. If you're into photography you'll want to peruse our picks of the best cameras and lenses for capturing the night sky.

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your planetary astrophotography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

Turn your eyes to the western sky at sunset on Feb. 19 to catch a delicate sight, as the razor-thin form of the two-day-old crescent moon sidles up to the gas giant Saturn in the evening sky.

The 10%-lit waxing crescent moon will be easy to miss as it hangs low on the western horizon at sundown, with Saturn appearing as a bright "evening star" less than 5 degrees — roughly the width of your three middle fingers held at arm's length — to the lower left of Earth's natural satellite.

You may notice a subtle glow infusing the shadowed expanse of the lunar disk as the sun sets further below the horizon. What you're seeing is a phenomenon known as "Earthshine", or the "Da Vinci Glow", wherein light reflects off of Earth's surface and onto the lunar disk during the days around the new moon phase.

Try to find a clear view of the western horizon on Feb. 19 and look to the lower right of Saturn to spot Mercury's steady light hugging the horizon. If you're incredibly lucky, you may also catch a glimpse of Venus, even lower still, before it slips swiftly out of sight, bathed in the glare of the setting sun.

Neptune will also be present — though far too dim to spot with the naked eye — between the moon and Saturn, less than 2 degrees to the right of the gas giant. A telescope with an aperture of at least 8 inches will be needed to spot the blue dot that represents its far-flung disk.

Both Saturn and the crescent moon will follow the sun below the horizon less than three hours after sunset for skywatchers in the U.S. Remember, the exact times that solar system bodies rise and set varies based on your location. Check out a trusted website like Time and Date for timings specific to your locale.

Stargazers hoping to get a closer look at the planets of the solar system should check out our picks of the best telescopes available in 2026, while photographers should peruse our selection of the best cameras and lenses.

Editor's Note: If you capture an image of the moon with Saturn and want to share it with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

Saturn's largest moon, the smog-enshrouded Titan, could be the result of a dramatic merger between two other moons that initiated a cavalcade of effects — including the formation of Saturn's beautiful rings.

When the Cassini–Huygens mission arrived in the Saturnian system in 2004, it was greeted by a menagerie of mysterious moons with bizarre properties. Titan, the second largest moon in the solar system, is also the only moon in our cosmic neighborhood to sport an atmosphere, one redolent in organic molecules. Then, there's Hyperion, a battered and bruised body that looks like a giant pumice stone tumbling around Saturn. Meanwhile, the yin-yang world of Iapetus, with its two-toned hemispheres believed to result from passing through Saturn's E ring — which is formed by material spewed out from Enceladus's geysers — has the most inclined orbit of any of Saturn's main moons, angled at 15.5 degrees to Saturn's equatorial plane.

And of course there are Saturn's rings, unmatched in the solar system; their age is now thought to be a "young" 100 million years, but their origins have remained frustratingly mysterious.

Now, astronomers led by Matija Ćuk of the SETI Institute have come to suspect the creation of the Titan that we know today via a collision and merger of two moons could have triggered a series of events that led to all of Saturn's other peculiarities that we see today.

The clue to all this came from Cassini's measurements of Saturn's "moment of inertia," which is governed by the distribution of mass inside Saturn itself. This moment of inertia is a controlling factor in how much Saturn's axis of rotation wobbles, like a spinning top, a phenomenon known as precession. It had been thought that the period of Saturn's precession matched the period of distant Neptune's orbit, creating a gravitational resonance that began to pull Saturn over at an angle of 26.7 degrees relative to the plane of its orbit around the sun. This tilt has the added benefit of allowing us to see Saturn's rings more clearly from Earth.

But Cassini's measurements of the internal mass distribution showed that slightly more of Saturn's mass was concentrated in the center than had been thought. This therefore changes Saturn's moment of inertia, which takes it marginally out of resonance with Neptune's orbit.

Seemingly, something had pulled Saturn out of sync with Neptune, resulting in mass to become redistributed inside Saturn. But what could have done that?

Despite being far less massive than Saturn, the ringed planet's moons can have a surprisingly large effect on the planet. Originally, to explain what took Saturn out of resonance with Neptune, scientists came up with a theory that once upon a time Saturn had another icy moon, which they named Chrysalis. This moon, they said, could have had its orbit perturbed following a close encounter with Titan and got too close to Saturn, where gravitational tidal forces ripped it apart about 100 million years ago. While most of the debris fell into Saturn, some remained in orbit, forming the rings. Meanwhile, the interaction with Chrysalis would have been the trigger to cause Titan's orbit to expand, which in turn would have pulled Saturn out of sync with Neptune.

It was a nice theory, but when Ćuk's team put it to the test in simulations, they found that the vast majority of the time Chrysalis collided with Titan instead. However, instead of being a dead end for the Chrysalis hypothesis, the simulations opened another door, and the key was another moon of Saturn, Hyperion, which orbits just beyond Titan.

Titan and Hyperion are another example of gravitational resonance. Their orbits are locked together: for every four orbits of Saturn that Titan makes, Hyperion makes exactly three orbits, tumbling disorderly around the ringed planet.

"Hyperion, the smallest among Saturn's major moons, provided us the most important clue about the history of the system," said Ćuk in a statement. "In simulations where the extra moon became unstable, Hyperion was often lost and survived only in rare cases. We recognized that the Titan–Hyperion lock is relatively young, only a few hundred million years old. This dates to about the same period when the extra moon disappeared. Perhaps Hyperion did not survive this upheaval, but resulted from it. If the extra moon merged with Titan, it would produce fragments near Titan's orbit. That is exactly where Hyperion would have formed."

Ćuk is suggesting that Chrysalis was real, and did indeed collide and merge with the proto-Titan 100–200 million years ago, and that it was this collision that shaped much of what we see in the Saturnian system.

For example, before the collision Titan may have been more like Jupiter's icy, airless moon Callisto, with an ancient and battered surface. The collision would have seen Titan's entire surface wiped clean, which would explain why there are so few craters on Titan beneath its thick atmosphere. And that atmosphere would have leaked out from Titan's interior during the collision. The collision knocked Titan in its orbit around Saturn, causing its orbit to widen and become more elongated. It is only now beginning to gradually grow more circular again.

The change in Titan's orbit would have seen its tidal forces wreak havoc on the inner mid—sized moons, prompting them to collide too, according to further simulations by scientists at the University of Edinburgh and NASA Ames Research Center. While the moons reformed from most of the debris, some of the icy particles would have settled around Saturn to form its ring systems.

The simulations also show that Chrysalis would have perturbed Iapetus's orbit, leading to its high inclination.

It is a nice, neat hypothesis — but currently, that is all it is. While the idea matches the facts, there's no direct evidence yet. NASA's Dragonfly mission to Titan, which is set to launch in 2028, could be the first to find such evidence by looking for further signs that Titan's surface is young, indicating the upheaval that followed the collision with Chrysalis over 100 million years ago.

The findings from Ćuk's team have been accepted for publication in Planetary Science Journal, and a preprint is available on the arXiv paper repository.

The two planets that are in prime position for evening visibility this month are, ironically, the two planets on opposite ends of the spectrum concerning size. The solar system's biggest planet, Jupiter, is in excellent position for observation this month of February, high in the east-southeast sky at nightfall and soaring high into the sky during the mid-to-late evening hours. Meanwhile, the smallest planet — Mercury — will enjoy its finest evening apparition, readily available to those who seek it out about three-quarters of an hour after sunset, low in the west-southwest sky, for a three-week interval beginning on Feb. 6.

There are two other planets in the evening sky: Saturn is also in the west-southwest sky, but getting progressively lower with each passing day. The combination of low altitude and increasingly bright twilight will make it rather difficult to sight during the final week of the month. If only Saturn were a bit brighter, it would be easier to see. Which is why dazzling Venus, in the same general vicinity as Mercury and Saturn, will slowly emerge into prominence during the last half of February and on into March.

The only planet completely out of the viewing loop is Mars, which is much too close to the glare of the sun to be seen all month long.

In our schedule, remember that when measuring the angular separation between two celestial objects, your clenched fist held at arm's length measures roughly 10-degrees. Here, we present a schedule below which provides some of the best planet viewing times, as well as directing you to where to look to see them.

Mercury

Mercury, moving from superior conjunction, begins a fine apparition on the evening of Feb. 6, low in the west-southwest for skywatchers at mid-northern latitudes. During the first part of February, it comes into view higher in the fading dusk each evening. Currently, magnitude -1.1 (among the stars, only Sirius is brighter), and 12 degrees east of the sun, the planet will set an hour after sundown. On the evening of Feb. 18, about 45 minutes after sunset, look low toward the west-southwest horizon for a hairline-thin waxing crescent moon, just 2 percent illuminated by the sun. Sitting less than one degree above it will be Mercury. The pair is even closer together as seen from the Midwest and still closer together as seen from the western U.S.

The view through binoculars should be stunning. As a bonus, for parts of Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and Florida, the moon will appear to pass directly in front of Mercury. On the following evening, Mercury attains its greatest elongation, only 18.1 degrees from the sun. So small an angle for an eastern elongation will not be matched until 2039. And yet around this time Mercury will be in the sky throughout evening twilight, the only such occasion in 2026. At this time, the speedy little planet shines at magnitude -0.4, and telescopes show its tiny disk exactly half lit — which isn't always the case at most of Mercury's greatest elongations. In the following week, Mercury fades by nearly a factor of five and soon sinks out of view. Inferior conjunction occurs on March 7.

Venus

Venus was at superior conjunction with the sun on Jan. 6; farthest from Earth on Jan. 8; and at aphelion — farthest from the sun in space — on Jan. 22. As February begins, Venus will be very challenging to glimpse even with optical aid, for it will be less than 4 degrees high at sunset and will set less than a half hour after the sun.

By Feb. 15, Venus may be evident to the eye without any optical aid. About 15 minutes after sunset, search very low near the west-southwest horizon. If you still can't find it, scan with binoculars, then once found, you should be able to see it with your unaided eyes shining radiantly through the bright evening twilight. On the other hand, by month's end, this brilliant -3.9-magnitude planet appears about 10 degrees high at sunset and should be reasonably easy to find before it sets about an hour after sundown.

Mars

Mars during February lies only 6 to 12 degrees west of the sun and, as such, is hopelessly lost in the solar glare.

Jupiter

Jupiter was at opposition on Jan. 10. So, February finds it already well up in the east as the sky darkens. It shines in Gemini, dimming a bit this month from magnitude -2.6 to -2.4 as it slowly retrogrades (moves westward relative to the background stars). The big planet is high for most of the night as seen from mid-northern latitudes; it's highest around 10:20 p.m. as February begins and 8:30 p.m. as the month ends. And although its apparent diameter shrinks slightly by about 6% during this month, Jupiter always appears large enough through a medium-sized telescope to see a lot of detail in its clouds if the air is sufficiently steady. As darkness falls on Feb. 26, look high in the eastern sky for the waxing gibbous moon and hovering about a half-dozen degrees below it will be "Big Jupe."

Saturn

Saturn is losing altitude rapidly with each passing night. At the beginning of the month, it's visible low in the west-southwest sky as darkness descends. Now Saturn's lower position will make locating it trickier, so tonight, use the moon as your benchmark. In telescopes, the still-narrow rings will be slowly opening like some late-winter flower, but by month's end, it will be difficult to get an image of them unruffled by Earth's quavering atmosphere. The crescent moon, which on Feb. 19 will have widened to 7% illuminated after its close encounter with Mercury on the previous evening, will sit about 4 degrees to the right of first-magnitude Saturn.

Look toward the southwestern horizon at sunset on Jan. 22 to witness the slender crescent moon cozy up to the gas giant Saturn beneath the stars of the constellation Pisces.

The moon's 22%-lit disk will appear roughly 30 degrees above the horizon — roughly the width of three clenched fists held at arm's length. Saturn will appear as a steady, bright star-like object less than 7 degrees to the moon's upper left.

Both Saturn and the moon's delicate, sickle profile will make for a gorgeous naked eye stargazing target and photo opportunity, with the four bright stars of the Great Square of Pegasus asterism forming a diamond to the pair's upper right.

A small telescope will enhance the view of the moon, revealing the dark basalt plains of Mare Crisium (the Sea of Crisis) and Mare Fecunditatis (the Sea of Fertility). These lunar features formed billions of years ago, when molten lava filled ancient impact basins and solidified in the extreme space environment.

Point the same telescope toward Saturn to catch the thin profile of its famous ring system dividing the gas giant's cloudy disk. The rings are currently tilted almost edge-on as seen from Earth. Saturn's largest moons Titan, Dione, Rhea and Tethys will also be visible as bright specs of light extending to one side of the gas giant's disk.

Neptune also lurks nearby on the night of Jan. 22. The distant ice giant — about 17 times farther from the sun than Earth — sits less than 2 degrees above Saturn, though you'll need a telescope with an aperture of at least 8-inches (200 millimeters) to resolve the tiny blue dot of its disk. For scale, the tip of your little finger held at arm's length accounts for roughly 1 degree of sky.

The moon and Saturn will set around four and a half hours after the sun on Jan. 22. By the following night, the upturned lunar crescent will have leapt past Saturn to appear above it in the evening sky, noticeably thicker ahead of its first quarter phase on Jan. 25, when its right half will be bathed in direct sunlight as its left lies in shadow.

Want to capture beautiful photos of the waxing moon? Then why not read our guide to photographing the lunar surface, or peruse our picks of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography if you're looking to upgrade your gear in preparation for the 2026 skywatching season. Our roundups of the best telescopes for viewing Saturn and Jupiter can also help you as the gas giants put on a spectacular show to dominate the night sky in January.

Editor's Note: If you take a picture of the moon with Saturn and want to share your astrophotography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

Scientists may finally know why Jupiter and Saturn have very different weather patterns at their poles, despite having similar sizes and compositions. The discovery could help researchers probe deep into the interiors of these giant gaseous planets.

Observations of the two solar system gas giants have revealed that Jupiter's north pole hosts a central polar vortex surrounded by eight smaller vortices, while Saturn has a single, strangely hexagonal, massive atmospheric whirlpool over its north pole.

While performing complex simulations of these types of vortexes of gas giants, the team behind this research found that the difference between a single vortex configuration and a multi-vortex pattern depended on how "hard" the base of the vortex was, meaning how heavy the gas is in this region (the softer the gas, the lighter it is). This "hardness" is in turn related to the interior composition of the gas giant.

"Our study shows that, depending on the interior properties and the softness of the bottom of the vortex, this will influence the kind of fluid pattern you observe at the surface, research team member Wanying Kang, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), said in a statement. "I don't think anyone’s made this connection between the surface fluid pattern and the interior properties of these planets. One possible scenario could be that Saturn has a harder bottom than Jupiter."

Softer than Saturn?

Kang and colleagues were inspired to conduct their simulations after viewing images of Jupiter captured by the Juno spacecraft, which has been orbiting the solar system's largest planet since 2016, and by images of Saturn delivered by Cassini over 13 years of observations before it was deliberately plunged into the ringed planet at the end of its mission in 2017.

The Juno images revealed the immense scale of Jupiter's polar storms, which are around 3,000 miles (4,800 kilometers) wide. For context, that is around half the width of Earth. Cassini's observations of Saturn, meanwhile, showed its single hexagonal vortex is a staggering 18,000 miles (29,000 kilometers) wide.

Astronomers aren't sure why there is such a size discrepancy between the two planets' vortices. "People have spent a lot of time deciphering the differences between Jupiter and Saturn," team leader and MIT scientist Jiaru Shi said. "The planets are about the same size and are both made mostly of hydrogen and helium. It’s unclear why their polar vortices are so different."

To answer this question, the team developed a 2D model of how vortices at the poles of gas giants like Saturn and Jupiter would evolve over time, applying this to a range of different scenarios. This included changing characteristics like the planets' sizes, the speed of their rotation, their internal heating, and the hardness of rotating fluid within their vortices.

After ensuring the fluid in these vortices flowed in random patterns, the scientists were ready to determine how the fluid evolved under specific conditions. This led to the discovery that a single mechanism could determine if a single vortex or multiple vortices developed;the softer the gas rotating at the bottom of the vortex is, the smaller that vortex is. That allows for the formation of multiple vortices, just as is seen at the poles of Jupiter.

If the team is right, then this implies that Jupiter consists of softer, thus lighter, gas, while Saturn seems to be composed of heavier gaseous material.

"What we see from the surface, the fluid pattern on Jupiter and Saturn, may tell us something about the interior, like how soft the bottom is, and that is important because maybe beneath Saturn's surface, the interior is more metal-enriched and has more condensable material, which allows it to provide stronger stratification than Jupiter," Shi concluded. "This would add to our understanding of these gas giants."

The team's research has been accepted for publication in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The new moon of January will be at 2:52 p.m. EST (1952 GMT) on Jan. 18, according to the U.S. Naval Observatory.

A new moon is, technically, a conjunction of the sun and moon. The two bodies share the same celestial longitude — if one drew a north-south line from the North Celestial Pole (right near where the Pole Star, Polaris, is located) the sun and moon would both be on it.

At the new phase, you can't see the moon from Earth unless there is a solar eclipse, the illuminated side is facing away from us. On top of that new moons rise and set with the sun; even if one could light up the side of the moon facing Earth it would be lost in the solar glare. Earth-based observers won't (visually) see a new moon until Feb.17, when there will be a solar eclipse visible from the southern Indian Ocean and Antarctica.

New moon skies are dark, especially when compared to nights when the moon is out; even a half-moon (when the moon is at first or last quarter phase) is the second brightest object in the sky after the sun. That means the nights on either side of a new moon are good for observing fainter stars and seeing the naked-eye nebulas and star clusters, particularly if one can watch the sky from a place away from city lights.

Visible planets

On the night of Jan. 18, there will be two planets visible: Saturn and Jupiter. By about 6 p.m., Saturn will be about 37 degrees above the southwestern horizon. In New York City, the sun sets at 4:56 p.m.; the timing and Saturn's location in the sky will be similar for anyplace near 40 degrees north, such as Chicago, Denver, Detroit, or Sacramento. In New York, Saturn sets at 9:48 p.m.

Jupiter, meanwhile, rises at 3:58 p.m.; since the sky darkens completely by about 6 p.m., one will see Jupiter about 21 degrees high in the east. Jupiter is brighter than the surrounding stars; one way to identify Jupiter is look for a rough triangle of "stars" with two of them to the left (north) of a brighter one; the brighter, steadier light is Jupiter. Jupiter is visible almost all night; the planet does not set until 6:49 a.m. (January 19) in New York, and it reaches its highest altitude (called transit) at 11:23 p.m. Jan. 18.

Unfortunately for planet hunters, Mercury, Venus and Mars are all too close to the sun to observe; they will come out of the solar glare in the weeks following the new moon. Mercury will emerge as an "evening star" in February and Venus will do so in March. Mars will emerge into the predawn skies in March.

For Southern Hemisphere skywatchers, the sky doesn't get dark until 9:30 p.m.; as it is the austral summer, the sun sets late. In Santiago, Chile, for example, sunset isn't until 8:54 p.m. local time on Jan. 18. Santiago is about as far south of the equator — 33 degrees — as Dallas or Charleston, South Carolina is north of it, and is of a similar latitude to cities such as Cape Town and Melbourne, Australia.

From Santiago, Saturn will be 22 degrees high in the west by 10 p.m. The ringed planet sets at 11:54 p.m. Jan. 18. Jupiter, meanwhile, rises at 8:11 p.m. local time, and by 10 p.m. is in the northeastern sky about 18 degrees high.

Stars and constellations

Winter constellations are in full swing for Northern Hemisphere observers in the latter half of January. Two hours after sunset — at about 7 p.m. in New York— some of the brightest constellations have risen — Orion (the Hunter), Gemini (the Twins), Taurus (the Bull), Canis Minor (the Little Dog) and Auriga (the Charioteer). Look low in the southeast to spot the brightest star in the sky, Sirius, the alpha star of Canis Major, the Big Dog.

You can start by identifying Gemini, as this is the constellation Jupiter is in. The two stars to the left (north) of Jupiter are Castor and Pollux, with Pollux being the one closer to the horizon. almost level with Jupiter. If you look down and to the right about four times Jupiter's distance from Pollux, you will see a bright white star; this is Procyon, the brightest star in Canis Minor. Go further to the right (south) and you see Sirius, which is recognizable by its blue-white hue and its brightness.

Directly above Sirius, about a third of the way from the horizon to the zenith (the point directly overhead) is Orion. Orion can be identified by the three stars that make up his belt — early in the night, they will appear to make an almost vertical line. Going up from the horizon, the first star is Alnitak, the second is Alnilam, and the third is Mintaka. Look slightly up and to the left of the belt and one can spot a bright reddish-orange star. This is Betelgeuse (pronounced like beetle-juice), marking one of Orion's shoulders. Above and to the right of Betelgeuse is Bellatrix, his other shoulder. On the right side of Orion's Belt, about the same distance from Mintaka as Betelgeuse is from Alnitak, is a bright blue-white star; this is Rigel.

Since the night will be moonless, just to the right of Orion's Belt and below it, you can, from a dark-sky location away from city lights, trace a group of faint stars that is Orion's sword, and in that group, you might be able to spot the Orion Nebula.

Look above Orion and go two-thirds of the way to the zenith to spot another reddish star, though its color is much less vivid than Betelgeuse. This is Aldebaran, the brightest star in Taurus. Aldebaran is in a group of fainter stars (the shape is a little bit like a U on its side or a backwards C). This is the Hyades, an open star cluster. Look higher still, almost straight up from Aldebaran, to see a tiny cluster of stars that are almost too close together to separate with the naked eye. This is the Pleiades, another open cluster also called the Seven Sisters. In binoculars, it will look like a miniature version of the Big Dipper.

Speaking of which, if you draw a line through Jupiter and Pollux northwards, you'll reach the Big Dipper, a group of stars that is part of Ursa Major, the Great Bear. The Dipper will be close to the horizon, with the bowl facing upwards. You can use the two stars at the front of the bowl, Dubhe and Merak (with Merak being the lower one), to find Polaris, the Pole Star.

By 9 p.m. The Big Dipper is almost vertical and in the northeast; the "bowl" faces west (left). The Dipper can now be used to point to other stars besides Polaris. If you draw a line to the right, connecting the stars at the back of the bowl (these will be the two lower in the sky) you'll reach Regulus, the brightest star in Leo, the Lion, which will be almost due east and about 17 degrees high (this will vary depending on one's exact latitude but it will be similar in any mid-Northern latitude city).

For Southern Hemisphere observers, January is when Puppis, Carina and Vela, the three constellations that make up the Argo, the famous ship of Jason and the Argonauts, are prominent, rising in the east by 10 p.m. Though you'll see an "upside down" sky, you can still use Jupiter to orient — Pollux will appear to be directly below the planet, as opposed to being to the left of it, and Procyon is to the right of Jupiter and above it, some 27 degrees high in the northeast. Look up and to the right from Procyon and you will see Sirius, about 51 degrees high. Look to the right (southwards) and still higher — about 59 degrees, or two thirds of the way to the zenith, and one spies Canopus, the alpha Star of Carina, the Ship's Keel. Below Canopus, there is a large "loop" of seven medium-bright stars, the topmost one (closest to Canopus) is called Regor, or Gamma Velorum, the brightest star in Vela, the Sail. Above and to the right of Vela is Puppis, the Poop Deck, another group of seven stars in an elongated shape rather like a peanut. The first four stars form a four-sided diamond shape to the left of and below Canopus; these are relatively faint. Just to the left of Regor is a fifth star, Zeta Puppis (or Naos) and the remaining two are to the left of that about twice as far from Regor as Naos is.

About 13 degrees above the south-southeastern horizon you can see Crux, the Southern Cross, which from the latitude of Santiago is circumpolar — it never sets. At 10 p.m. it is upside down (or nearly so) so the crossbar is closer to the horizon and its brightest star, Acrux, is highest.

If you look southwest and about 54 degrees above the horizon, you can see a bright star in a patch of sky that seems to have few of them; this is Achernar, the end of Eridanus, the River. Achernar is not visible from much of the Northern Hemisphere but the end of the constellation Eridanus is — it starts just to the south of Orion's foot, Rigel, which from the latitude of Santiago is 61 degrees high in the north-northeast, with Orion's Belt below rather than above it.

Jupiter, the largest planet in the solar system, currently shines as a brilliant silvery "star" in Gemini the Twins, low in the east-northeast sky as dusk slowly fades. It forms an eye-catching scalene triangle configuration with the "Twin Stars" Pollux and Castor; you really can't miss it.

And at 4 a.m. EST (0900 GMT) on Saturday (Jan. 10), Jupiter will arrive at that point in the sky directly opposite to the sun, called "opposition." If all the planets' paths around the sun were true circles, this would also coincide with Earth's closest approach to Jupiter, 393.3 million miles (632.9 million kilometer). That, however, occurs 25 hours earlier, at 3 a.m. EST (0800 GMT) on Friday (Jan. 9).

Opposition occurs when Earth, moving faster in its orbit than Jupiter, overtakes the giant planet. In the four months centered on each opposition, Jupiter appears to swirl backward in a loop against the background stars. After opposition, we will leave Jupiter behind. Jupiter is also currently moving away from the sun on its own elliptical path, while, less than a week ago, Earth passed its closest point to the sun (perihelion).

Jupiter will reach its farthest point from the sun — its aphelion point, which takes it 507 million miles (815.7 million km) from our star — on Dec. 28, 2028.

'Big Jupe' almost became a star

Jupiter constantly is the most interesting object in the solar system after the moon and the sun and has always held a special place in the hearts of telescope viewers. Jupiter provides telescope users with a feast of features: a restless atmosphere and a retinue of bright satellites.

This giant planet — which has nearly 2.5 times more mass than all of the other planets put together — takes nearly 12 Earth years to go once around the sun. Thus, it spends roughly a year within each of the 12 zodiacal constellations, since the constellations are of unequal width.

With an equatorial diameter of 88,846 miles (142,984 km), Jupiter is the largest planet: a colossal ball of hydrogen and helium without a solid surface. Scientists are currently uncertain about the exact nature of Jupiter's core, but modern data suggests it is not the solid, compact rocky ball once imagined. Recent findings from NASA's Juno mission and updated scientific models suggest that, instead of a sharp boundary between a solid core and the rest of the planet, Jupiter likely has a "dilute" core. This means that heavy elements like rock and metal are dissolved and encased in a thick mantle of metallic hydrogen enveloped in a massive atmospheric cloak of multi-colored clouds of ammonium hydrosulphide.

And, in a strange sense, Jupiter might even be referred to as a stillborn star, for it has the makings (mostly hydrogen) if not the mass of a stellar body. Its relative smallness, however, prevents the initiation of the nuclear processes that could have turned it into a full-fledged star. Had Jupiter been born a bit bigger, we would have the distinction of living within a binary star system.

Cloud bands and satellites

Binoculars show Jupiter as a tiny disk, while a medium-size telescope reveals numerous dark belts, light zones and a wealth of festoons, garlands, ovals and other features extending here and there. Jupiter's rotation is the fastest of all the solar system's planets. It completes a rotation on its axis in slightly less than 10 hours, which creates an equatorial bulge easily perceived through most telescopes. And January offers nearly optimum views of its intricate cloud features; it's even possible at mid-northern latitudes to observe every longitude of the planet during the long night.

Besides its prominent cloud belts, Jupiter's greatest telescopic treasure are its four Galilean moons that run a merry race with each other around the planet, changing their respective positions from hour to hour and night to night. The smallest of telescopes – even steadily held 7-power binoculars – will reveal these four bright satellites of Jupiter as tiny stars nearly in line and changing their places in the line as they revolve around the planet in orbits nearly edgewise to us. Typically, at least two or three are visible at any given moment.

On Saturday (Jan. 10), for example, we will see three satellites on one side of Jupiter (going outward from the planet: Ganymede, Io and Europa), while the fourth (Callisto) remains all by itself on Jupiter's opposite side.

Coming attractions

Jupiter will appear to climb higher in the evening sky in the weeks to come. Currently, the giant planet is ready for telescopic observation by 7 p.m., when it will stand one-third of the way up from the eastern horizon to that point directly overhead (called the zenith). It reaches its highest position in the south around midnight and is heading toward its setting in the west during dawn. After the glory of its opposition on the midnight meridian, Jupiter will appear a bit higher in the east each evening and will engage its stellar neighbors, Pollux and Castor in a sort of celestial pas de trois in the coming weeks.

On the evening of Feb. 27, the scalene triangle will have changed into a narrow isosceles, and nearly aligned with Pollux and Castor will be a waxing gibbous moon. But the real show occurs in late May and early June, when a fascinating dance of three planets and the moon will provide evening enchantment. On the evening of May 20, a crescent moon will be positioned well to the upper left of Jupiter. During the final week of May, one hour after sunset, you can watch how Venus climbs to meet Jupiter. On June 9, they'll call attention to themselves low in the west-northwest sky. Finally, on June 16, a slender crescent moon will appear to the right of Jupiter, and below the moon will sit yet another planet, Mercury.

The heavenly ballet continuously being performed by these "wandering stars" has played a crucial role in the celestial lore of all people. It is not surprising that they were regarded as deities. The five naked-eye planets (Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn) have been known since antiquity, and it is also interesting that the members of this quintet have all been examined closely by space probes. Of course, before the advent of the telescope, virtually all peoples regarded planets as a special category of star.

Over the following month, Jupiter sinks into the sun's glare. Emerging into the morning sky of August, he will progress into the constellation of Cancer the Crab, and on Sept. 24 he will cross over into the western boundary of Leo the Lion, where he will remain for the balance of the year. A spectacular eclipse (occultation) of Jupiter will await early risers across much of North America on Oct. 6, and a brightening Mars will closely pass north of Jupiter on Nov. 16. On Dec. 13, Jupiter will begin to swirl backward into the next loop that will climax in the opposition of Feb. 10, 2027.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, Sky and Telescope and other publications.

Want to know when each planet will be at its best or when you can catch eye-catching planetary pairings in 2026?

This guide breaks down the major planetary events of the year, from conjunctions to oppositions to close planet-star encounters.

Related: Night sky tonight live blog

Mercury

Mercury, the smallest of the planets visible to the naked eye, appears as an evening star in the western sky, setting about an hour after the sun. As a morning star, it rises about an hour before the sun in the eastern sky. To view the planet, a clear, unobstructed view of the horizon is essential. Mercury usually appears as a bright "star" with a yellowish or ochre tint.

Visibility windows in 2026

• Evenings: Feb. 5–26; June 1–22; Sept. 28–Oct. 19
• Mornings: March 27– April 17; July 26– Aug. 16; Nov. 13– Dec. 4

When will it be at its best?

• Evening: Feb. 5–26
• Morning: Nov. 13– Dec. 4

On the evening of Feb. 18, about 30 minutes after sunset, Mercury will sit just 1 degree above a slender waxing crescent moon low in the west-southwest.

Venus

Venus, with its nearly circular orbit and a diameter only 400 miles (640 kilometers) smaller than Earth's, shines with a brilliant, steady silvery light.

Visibility windows in 2026

• Evenings: March 8– Oct. 14
• Mornings: Nov. 3– Dec. 31

When will it be at its best?

Venus reaches greatest brilliancy in the evening sky on Sept. 19 and in the morning sky on Nov. 29. In late September through mid-October, and again through most of November, Venus will show a striking crescent phase in telescopes and steady binoculars.

Notable conjunctions:

• March 8: Venus passes 1 degree to the upper right of Saturn.
• June 9: Venus passes 1.6 degrees to the upper right of Jupiter — a brilliant sight in the west-northwest 45 minutes after sunset.
• Nov. 7 (morning): Shortly before sunrise, look low to the east-southeast for Venus, a crescent moon, and the star Spica, all fitting within 2.5 degrees.

Mars

Mars, long associated with Ares, the Greek god of war, shines like a star with a yellowish-orange hue and can vary considerably in brightness.

Visibility in 2026

• Mornings: March 18- Dec. 31

When will it be at its best?

This is an "off" year for Mars. The planet begins 2026 lost in the sun's glare and reaches solar conjunction on Jan. 9, sitting on the far side of the solar system about 223 million miles from Earth.

Mars begins to reappear in the third week of March, rising before sunrise among the faint stars of Aquarius. It moves into Taurus for the first half of summer, shining only around magnitude +1.3.

Sky highlights:

• Sept. 25: Castor and Pollux point directly toward Mars.
• Oct. 11: Mars passes through the Beehive Cluster in Cancer — an attractive sight in binoculars.
• Nov. 26: Mars passes 1.7 degrees above Regulus in Leo, creating a dramatic color contrast.
• By late December, Mars brightens to magnitude –0.1 and will rival Arcturus in both color and brightness.
• Feb. 19, 2027: Mars reaches its next opposition, so it steadily approaches Earth late in 2026.

Notable conjunctions:

• April 20: Mars aligns closely with Saturn and Mercury.
• July 4: Mars passes just 0.1 degree south of Uranus, offering a superb guidepost for locating Uranus.
• Nov. 16: Mars passes 1.2 degrees to the upper left of Jupiter.

Jupiter

Jupiter, the giant planet with a diameter about 11 times bigger than Earth's, shines with a bright silver-white luster.

Visibility windows in 2026

• Mornings: Jan. 1–9; Aug. 19– Dec. 31
• Evenings: Jan. 10–July 7

Jupiter reaches opposition on Jan. 10 and shines brightest from Jan. 1–22 at magnitude –2.7 in Gemini. It enters Cancer on June 22 and Leo on Sept. 24, where it remains through year's end.

On June 9, Jupiter pairs with Venus in a stunning "double planet" display low in the west-northwest at dusk.

Oct. 6 lunar occultation

On the morning of Oct. 6, observers across most of North America (excluding the far West) and northern Cuba will witness a spectacular lunar occultation of Jupiter. A waning crescent moon will slide directly in front of Jupiter, hiding it for up to an hour depending on location. Jupiter disappears behind the bright limb and reemerges dramatically from the moon's dark side.

Saturn

Saturn shines as a yellowish-white "star" of moderate brightness. Its famous rings, invisible to the naked eye, turned edge-on in 2025 and were nearly impossible to see for weeks. They are now slowly opening up again.

Constellation path in 2026:

• Starts in Aquarius (to Jan. 14)
• Enters Pisces (Jan. 14– April 8)
• Moves through Cetus (April 9– June 2)
• Back into Pisces (June 3–Sept 4)
• Back into Cetus (from Sept. 5 onward)

Visibility windows in 2026

• Evenings: Jan. 1–March 8; Oct. 4–Dec. 31
• Mornings: April 12– Oct. 3

Saturn reaches opposition on Oct. 4 and is brightest Sept. 24–Oct. 9.

Notable conjunctions:

• Feb. 15: Saturn sits less than 1 degree from Neptune, though Neptune is much fainter.
• Apr. 20: Saturn aligns with Mars and Mercury.

Uranus

Uranus can be glimpsed with the naked eye under very dark skies by keen-eyed observers. At magnitude +5.6, it is easily found with binoculars; small telescopes show a tiny greenish disk.

Uranus spends all of 2026 in Taurus.

Visibility windows in 2026

• Evenings: Jan. 1–May 5; Nov. 25– Dec. 31
• Mornings: June 9–Nov. 24

Uranus reaches opposition on Nov. 25 and is brightest Oct. 24–Dec. 30.

On July 4, Uranus sits only 0.1 degree north of Mars, making Mars an ideal pointer to the seventh planet. Mars will outshine Uranus by a factor of about 158.

Neptune

Neptune remains in Pisces throughout 2026. At magnitude +7.8, it is visible only in binoculars or a telescope and appears bluish-gray.

Visibility windows in 2026

• Evenings: Jan. 1–March 6; Sept. 25–Dec. 31
• Mornings: April. 8– Sept. 24

Neptune reaches opposition on Sept. 25 and is brightest July 28–Nov. 24.

On Feb. 15, Neptune lies less than 1 degree to the upper right of Saturn, though Neptune is only about 1/525 as bright.

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, Sky and Telescope and other publications.

Tear your eyes away from fireworks this New Year's Eve (Dec. 31) to witness a magnificent natural light show, complete with twinkling constellations and star clusters, the steady light of planets and the awe-inspiring sight of the waxing gibbous moon shining in the constellation Taurus.

The moon will be visible halfway up the eastern horizon in the hours following sunset, with the delicate light of the Pleiades open star cluster vying for attention 5 degrees — roughly the width of your three middle fingers held at arm's length — to the upper right of the 95%-lit lunar disk.

Look directly below the moon to find the stars of the constellation Orion twinkling close to the eastern horizon. The brightest point of light to Orion's left is no star at all, but rather the "king of the planets," Jupiter. On the final night of 2025, Jupiter shines in the constellation Gemini, close to its two brightest stars — Castor and Pollux.

Saturn's steady light can also be seen shining halfway up the southern horizon around this time. A telescope with an aperture of around 6 inches will help reveal its famous rings as a thin line bisecting the planet's cloud tops. The rings are currently oriented edge-on to Earth, but will gradually open up throughout 2026 to reveal their majestic, sweeping structure, including a 2,980-mile (4,800-kilometer) gap known as the Cassini Division.

By midnight, Saturn will have slipped below the horizon, while the moon and Jupiter will stand high overhead. Look roughly 40 degrees above the northern horizon — approximately the width of four clenched fists stacked on top of each other — to find the bright star Polaris, around which the entire sky appears to rotate. To its right you'll spot the familiar sight of the Big Dipper, tilted so that it appears to be standing on the end of its handle.

Those same stars will glide silently through the night as the last moments of 2025 fade and the first of a new year begins, heralding the start of another year of incredible stargazing opportunities.

If you're new to stargazing, be sure to read our article filled with expert advice on how to begin your amateur astronomy journey. We also have tips on how to observe the moon, along with superb roundups of the best telescope and binocular deals available if you're looking to upgrade your equipment.

Clear skies and a Happy New Year from everyone here at Space.com!

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your astrophotography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

Look to the southern sky after dark on Dec. 26 to spot the waxing crescent moon shining near the gas giant Saturn among the stars of the constellation Pisces.

The 48%-lit moon will appear roughly halfway up the southern sky in the hours following sunset. Saturn will show up as a brilliant star less than four degrees to the lower left of the lunar disk. For scale, your three middle fingers held at arm's length span about five degrees of sky.

A pair of 10x50 binoculars should easily fit both Saturn and the moon within the same field of view, while revealing an assortment of fascinating surface features on Earth's natural satellite, which will appear almost half-lit just one day shy of its first quarter phase on Dec. 27.

Look to the upper region of the lunar crescent to find the menacing form of the Aristotles crater with its eastern rim bathed in impenetrable shadow. The Eudoxus crater is visible just beneath and beyond the dark expanses of Mare Serenitatis (the Sea of Serenity) and Mare Tranquilitatis (the Sea of Tranquility), which served as the landing site of the historic Apollo 11 lunar landing.

A telescope with a 6-inch (152 millimeter) aperture will begin to reveal the razor-thin profile of Saturn's rings, as they rest oriented edge-on to Earth following the gas giant's ring plane crossing in March. Astronomy filters can also aid in revealing details in Saturn's upper atmosphere, which appears divided into distinct multi-colored cloud bands that circle the gas giant at 1,600 feet (500 meters) per second.

Want to get a closer look at the diverse menagerie of worlds populating our solar system? Then be sure to browse our picks of the best telescopes for exploring the night sky, along with our guides to picking the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography, if you want to immortalize your stargazing sessions.

Editor's Note: If you capture an image of the moon with Saturn and want to share it with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

Christmas is a wonderful time for those who celebrate and once the turkey dinner is done and the wrapping paper has been tidied away, there's always one last treat that we all can share — the majesty of the winter night sky.

So, gather your friends and family and join us on a Christmas night sky tour featuring glistening constellations, bright planets and, of course, where to find the moon on this silent night.

Did you get a new telescope, binoculars or a camera for Christmas? Then be sure to check out our guide featuring expert advice on how to begin your amateur astronomy journey, or read up on how to photograph the night sky, or the lunar surface. Those new to the night sky may also want to peruse our roundups of the best astronomy smartphone apps, which use augmented reality technology to help you find specific stars, planets, or deep sky objects with ease.

What to look out for in the Christmas night sky

The hours following sunset on Dec. 25 offer a wealth of naked-eye astronomy targets that can put even the most glitzy Christmas lights to shame, especially when viewed from a dark sky location.

Look to the southwestern horizon soon after nightfall to find the delicate 35%-lit waxing crescent moon shining low in the winter sky. Saturn shines nearby as a bright "evening star" less than 15 degrees to the moon's upper left. For reference, the width of your fist held at arm's length accounts for roughly 10 degrees of sky, while the span of your three middle fingers is approximately 5 degrees.

A 6-inch telescope will help reveal several of Saturn's largest moons, including Rhea, Titan, Tethys and Dione. Sadly, the gas giant's sweeping ring system will appear as little more than a thin line, thanks to its current edge-on alignment with Earth following a ring plane crossing in March earlier this year.

The moon's thickening crescent will appear beautiful to the unaided eye, while a telescope will allow you to explore the vast, smooth expanses of Mare Crisium and Mare Fecunditatis — two prominent solidified lava plains that scar the moon's Earth-facing side.

Both Saturn and the moon will set shortly after 11 p.m. local time for viewers in the U.S.

Next, turn your gaze to the eastern sky to find mighty Jupiter shining among the stars of the constellation Gemini, close to Castor and Pollux — which represent the heads of the twin brothers depicted in the celestial formation.

Jupiter will be the second brightest object in the night sky on Dec. 25 — after the moon — and so will be easy to spot as it makes its way overhead east to west over the course of the night. The famous constellation Orion will be visible twinkling to its right throughout, with the stars of the Hyades and Pleiades open star clusters visible above in the constellation Taurus, the bull.

Finally, turn your eyes north to find Polaris — the "North Star" — shining roughly 40 degrees above the horizon (its altitude matches your latitude, so it will appear lower or higher depending on where you are). You can pinpoint Polaris using your smartphone astronomy app, or by finding one of the most recognizable asterisms in the night sky, the Big Dipper, and using it as a guide to point the way.

First, locate the "pan" of the Big Dipper in the constellation Ursa Major, which sits low on the northern horizon after sunset. Next, draw a line from the star representing the outer base of the pan, known as Merak, up through the star representing the pouring lip, which astronomers call Dubhe. Follow that line out into space and the next bright star you find will be the North Star!

The entire sky will appear to revolve around this one point of light as the night plays out, presenting a stunning anchor for anyone hoping to capture a time-lapse "star-trail" portrait of the Christmas sky.

We hope you enjoyed this short tour of the night sky and from everyone at Space.com, we wish you a merry Christmas!

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your astrophotography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

Saturn's huge moon Titan may not hide an ocean under its frozen surface but rather widespread pockets of liquid water, a new study finds.

Titan is the largest of the 274 known moons orbiting Saturn. In fact, Titan is bigger than the planet Mercury.

"I love Titan — I think it's one of the most interesting worlds in the solar system," study lead author Flavio Petricca, a planetary scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, told Space.com. "It's the only moon in our solar system with an atmosphere, and it's the only body with liquid on its surface other than Earth."

Scientists have long suspected that seas might also lurk under Titan's icy shell. For instance, the way Titan flexes under Saturn's gravity suggests that the moon is home to a vast underground ocean.

In the new study, Petricca and his colleagues wanted to reexamine Titan using new, improved methods to analyze radio tracking data. These new techniques greatly reduced uncertainties regarding data gathered by NASA's Cassini mission of Titan's interior.

Unexpectedly, the scientists discovered that Titan's interior is resisting distortion from Saturn's gravitational pull to a much greater degree than previously thought. This suggests Titan likely does not have a hidden ocean, but instead a layer of ice close to its melting point that is kept from liquefying by high pressure. This slushy icy likely hosts pockets of liquid water, the researchers added.

Titan may once have had an underground ocean near the beginning of its history, Petricca said. There may not have been enough heat from radioactive elements in its core to keep this ocean from freezing, he noted. "It may be going through a phase again where heating is increasing again," Petricca added.

All in all, ocean worlds may be less common than recently thought, the scientists noted. "We're not certain if having widespread liquid pockets instead of a global ocean makes Titan more or less habitable," Petricca said. "It will be interesting to find out."

NASA's upcoming Dragonfly mission to Titan can help scan the moon to better understand its geology. "We'll better understand the conditions for habitability there," Petricca said.

The scientists detailed their findings online Dec. 17 in the journal Nature.

Look to the southeastern horizon in the hours following sunset on Nov. 29 — you'll be able to see the moon shine close to the gas giant Saturn as Neptune lurks unseen nearby.

The waxing gibbous moon will appear half-lit on the night of Nov. 29, just one day on from its first quarter phase, as it glows with reflected sunlight beneath the stars of the constellation Pisces. Saturn will appear as a bright "evening star" shining less than 5 degrees — roughly the equivalent to the width of your clenched fist held at arm's length — to the lower right of the gas giant.

Nights surrounding the moon's first quarter phase present a superb opportunity to explore the lunar surface as the line separating night from day — known as the terminator — sweeps across the lunar surface, throwing craters and mountain ranges into sharp relief. As such, the moon will appear particularly spectacular through the eyepiece of a backyard telescope with an aperture of around 6-inches, which will reveal stunning detail in the tortured surface of Earth's ancient companion.

Saturn will make for a striking sight for both naked eye and telescopic observations on the night of Nov. 29. An 8-inch (200 mm) telescope will help reveal the horizontal bands lining the cloud surface of the gas giant, though its iconic ring system is currently positioned almost edge-on to Earth, making it appear as little more than a thin line bisecting the planet through the eyepiece of a scope.

The night of Nov. 29 will also see Saturn end its "retrograde" westward movement through the stars of Pisces, after which it will begin to track an eastward path through the sky, according to in-the-sky. Planetary retrograde motion occurs in the weeks and months following opposition, when Earth's tighter orbit around the sun causes it to "overtake" more distant worlds, briefly making it appear as if they are moving "backward" in the night sky.

Neptune will also lurk unseen roughly 2 degrees below the moon on the night of Nov. 29, though it will be far too dim to spot with the unaided eye. Under ideal conditions a telescope with an aperture of 8-inches or more may reveal the presence of the planet as a tiny blue dot against the blackness of space. However, the light of the nearby waxing moon could make spotting the distant world more challenging than usual on Nov. 29.

Want to explore the lunar maria and ancient craters of the moon for yourself? Then be sure to check out our roundup of the best telescopes for observing the night sky in 2025.

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your lunar astrophotography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s) and comments, along with your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

The National weather outlook for Thanksgiving Day suggests that much of the country will enjoy generally fair weather. The exceptions will be for parts of the Great Lakes where snow showers and flurries will fall, along with perhaps some locally heavy lake-effect snow squalls, especially for northeast Ohio, northwest Pennsylvania, and western and northern New York State. In addition, some light snow may fall over parts of the "Big Sky Country" of Montana and northern Idaho, with rain showers near and along the coasts of Washington and Oregon. Much of the western US will enjoy unseasonably mild weather, while a good part of the eastern US will be experiencing rather brisk and unseasonably cold conditions.

If your household is like most American families, then on Thursday, you likely will all be sitting down with family and friends to a traditional Thanksgiving turkey dinner during the mid-to-late afternoon hours. Then, as darkness falls, some will probably migrate into the living room to catch some football or other holiday fare on television. But if you have a large gathering of family and friends at your home — and if your skies are mainly clear — why not invite everyone outside to gaze at the evening sky?

If you have binoculars, or better yet, a telescope, you just might end up turning this into a memorable family tradition of its own.

The moon, plus a bright planet

As darkness falls on Thursday, there will be the moon shining in the south-southwest, only several hours away from arriving at its first quarter or "half" phase. And located less than 20 degrees — the equivalent of two clenched fists held at arm's length — to its left will be the planet Saturn.

Even in binoculars, the moon is a striking sight to see. It's such a special object because it doesn't matter whether you live in a rural area or in the middle of a brightly lit city, for the moon can always be readily observed. It always looks spectacular whether you're using binoculars or a telescope. It never looks precisely the same, no matter how often you view it, and can be observed even on hazy or partially cloud-covered nights. As it turns out, when the moon is near first quarter, that's just about the best time to look at it for a few reasons:

1. The moon is in a fine position for evening study
2. The moon is not sufficiently bright to cause loss of detail due to glare.
3. As the line of darkness — called the terminator — recedes, features near the border stand out in bold relief; the shadows become stronger and details are more easily seen.

If I may paraphrase the mysterious voice from the 1989 movie, "Field of Dreams": "If you set up your telescope, they will come." And you'll get a big kick out of your Turkey Day guests uttering all the "oohs" and "ahs" or exclamations of "Wow!" just one peek through the eyepiece will get.

Meanwhile, Saturn glows at first magnitude, shining with a sedate, yellow-white glow and appearing slightly brighter than the star Fomalhaut, glowing far to its lower right. Its famous ring system is now tilted only about one-half-degree toward Earth and as a result, it appears most unusual when viewed through the eyepiece of a telescope magnifying over 30-power; just a thin line of light bisecting Saturn's disk.

Stars of late autumn

If we concentrate on the stars and constellations, it is interesting to note that many of the star groups and rich Milky Way fields of summer evenings are still very much evident in the western part of the sky, while the brilliant yellow star Capella ascending in the northeast is a promise of even more dazzling luminaries to come. In just a few weeks, Orion and his retinue will be dominating our winter skies.

Still very well placed high in the west is the "Summer Triangle," a roughly isosceles figure composed of the stars Vega, Altair and Deneb. As we move deeper into the autumn season and the evenings grow all the chillier, this configuration sinks lower and lower in the west. If you have binoculars, invite family and friends to use them to sweep among the splendid star fields of the Summer Triangle. They may very well share Galileo's awe when, more than four centuries ago, he first turned his telescope on the myriads of faint stars that compose our Milky Way.

Looking high in the south-southeast — almost overhead — are the four bright stars that compose the Great Square of Pegasus, a landmark of the autumn sky. And if you have a clear view of the northern horizon, it is there where you will find the familiar Big Dipper, looking abnormally large due to the "moon illusion" which makes both the sun and the moon and even star patterns like the Dipper, appear larger-than-normal when they are situated near to the horizon. Meanwhile, the striking zig-zag row of five bright stars forming the "M" of Cassiopeia, the Queen, soars high above the Dipper in the north.

Looking back in time

The very first Thanksgiving is said to have taken place in the year 1621. We see many stars by light that started its immense journey before our country was born. Are there any stars that are around 400 light-years away? Because of the difficulty in measuring parallaxes (distant objects' changing positions when viewed from Earth), astronomers cannot determine such distances with an accuracy of one light-year. However, the 2025 "Observer's Handbook" of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, in its table of 288 brightest stars, lists two that are above the horizon on November evenings that are 400 light-years away: Third-magnitude Algenib, the star in the lower left corner of the Great Square of Pegasus, and second-magnitude Almach, at the end of the chain of stars marking the constellation of Andromeda, the princess. If you see either of these stars on your next clear night, keep in mind that you are looking at light that started on its journey to Earth about the same time that the first pilgrims were arriving in what we now call the state of Massachusetts.

Here at Space.com, we like to wish a very happy and safe Thanksgiving to all, and of course, clear skies!

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, Sky & Telescope and other publications. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

Small icy moons in the outer reaches of our solar system may hide boiling oceans underneath their surfaces, a new study finds.

Previous research found that some of the icy moons in the outer solar system, such as Saturn's moon Enceladus, are not frozen solid. Instead, they may host oceans between their ice shells and rocky cores. Because on Earth, there is virtually life wherever there is water, this has raised the hope that such hidden oceans may be the best sites in our solar system to look for extraterrestrial life.

To shed light on the buried oceans within these icy moons, geophysicist Maxwell Rudolph at the University of California, Davis, previously examined the forces that might result from changes in the thickness of the icy shells of these moons over the course of hundreds of millions of years.

"We were especially interested in whether the stresses could lead to the formation of cracks that connect the surface to the subsurface ocean, allowing the eruption of liquid water from a potentially habitable ocean to space," Rudolph told Space.com.

In prior work, Rudolph and his colleagues focused on what happens to these moons when their ice shells get thicker. As ice takes up a greater volume than a similar mass of liquid water, freezing places pressure on ice shells, generating features such as the "tiger stripes" seen on Enceladus.

In the new study, the researchers explored what happens when the icy shells of these moons become thinner due to melting from the bottom. For instance, previous research discovered a wobble in the orbit of Saturn's moon Mimas was potentially due to an ocean under its icy crust that likely arose in the past 10 million years, given how its surface still retains many ancient features, such as craters. This ocean likely resulted when Mimas's shell melted due to interactions with other Saturnian moons.

The scientists discovered that if these icy shells thin, the pressure they place on the oceans drops. On the smallest icy moons, such as Mimas and Enceladus or Uranus's Miranda, the pressure could lower enough to reach a so-called "triple point" — a specific combination of temperature and pressure in which ice, liquid water and water vapor can all co-exist. This can lead the layers of the oceans closest to their icy shells to boil after the icy shells thin by about three to nine miles (five to 15 kilometers).

"This is the kind of boiling that happens at low temperatures, not the kind of boiling that occurs in kitchens when you heat water up to past 100 degrees C [212 degrees F]," Rudolph said. "It's instead boiling very close to zero degrees C [32 degrees F]. So for any potential life forms below that boiling area, life could go on as usual."

In contrast, on larger ice moons more than 370 miles (600 km) wide, such as Uranus's Titania, the drop in pressure from melting ice would instead cause the ice shell to crack before the triple point for water is reached, the team calculated. The researchers suggest that features of Titania's geology, such as wrinkle ridges, might have resulted from a period of ice shell thinning followed by re-thickening.

The gases from boiling might have a number of effects, such as the formation of clathrates — complex icy structures that entrap gas molecules. "Future work will address these processes in detail to understand what happens to gas once it has been released from an ocean and what kinds of surface features we would expect to form in association with these processes," Rudolph said.

The scientists detailed their findings online Nov. 24 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

Saturn's rings will appear to have disappeared if you catch a glimpse of the planet through the eyepiece of a telescope on the night of Nov. 23 — but don't worry, you'll be witnessing an illusion! That's when the iconic debris disk will align edge-on with Earth, therefore hiding from view.

Our view of Saturn's rings has shifted dramatically over the years thanks to the lopsided 26.7 degree tilt at which the gas giant orbits the sun. The slow progressions of Earth and Saturn through their orbits dictates whether the majesty of Saturn's ring structure is laid bare for all to see, or whether it is concealed while presented edge-on — an event astronomers refer to as a "ring plane crossing."

The last ring plane crossing took place on Mar. 23 earlier this year, at a time when Saturn was positioned close to the sun in the dawn sky and thus lost in our star's glare. Thankfully, the night of Nov. 23 will see Earth and Saturn's orbits together make the gas giant's iconic rings angled so they appear incredibly thin once again when viewed from Earth — so much so that they will look almost invisible through the scope of a backyard telescope.

Look halfway up the southeastern sky on Nov. 23 to find Saturn shining as a bright "evening star" below the circlet of stars representing the head of the Great Western Fish in the constellation Pisces.

Saturn's rings will be hidden from sight, though a thin line of shadow may be visible crossing the gas giant's surface and hinting at their phantom presence. A telescope with an aperture of 4 inches or more will also help reveal the presence of atmospheric details on its roiling cloud surface, along with the presence of its largest moons, including Titan, Enceladus and Rhea.

Stargazers interested in watching Saturn's rings open up over the coming years should check out our guide to the best telescopes for observing the night sky, along with our roundup of the best astronomy smartphone apps to help you find the gas giant throughout the year.

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your photos of Saturn with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

Excess heat is flowing from the north pole of Enceladus, hinting at a careful energy balance deep that may have kept the subsurface ocean stable over geologically significant timescales, boosting its suitability for life.

One of Saturn's moons, Enceladus has been known to be an active ocean world ever since 2005, when the Cassini mission found giant plumes of water vapour squirting up from the ocean deep below through huge fractures in the surface. These plumes are powered by energy from tidal interactions with Saturn, which flex the moon's interior, subtly squeezing and stretching it and ultimately keeping its interior warm enough for liquid water.

The question of how long Enceladus' ocean has existed is an unanswered one, but with water, heat and the right organic chemistry for life, Enceladus is viewed as a prime target for the search for life beyond Earth.

"Enceladus is a key target in the search for life outside the Earth, and understanding the long-term availability of its energy is key to determining whether it can support life," said study leader Georgina Miles, of the Southwest Research Institute and a Visiting Scientist at the University of Oxford, in a statement.

If Enceladus didn't continually receive enough energy from tidal heating, its ocean would gradually freeze. If it received too much energy, the activity in the ocean would increase, altering its environment perhaps to the detriment of its habitability. Therefore, a careful balance between the energy deposited into the moon by the tidal interaction, and the energy that leaks away through convection up to the surface and into space, is required to ensure stability over hundreds of millions or even billions of years.

Planetary scientists know that heat flows out from the south pole, where the fractures, known as tiger stripes, that produce the plumes are located. However, they thought that Enceladus' north pole was inert.

It seems that they were wrong.

By comparing measurements from Cassini's Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) of the temperature of Enceladus' north pole during Saturnian winter in 2005 and what passes for summer on the icy moon in 2015, and then comparing it to predicted temperatures based on modeling, Miles' team found that Enceladus' north pole was seven degrees Celsius (45 degrees Fahrenheit) warmer than expected. This excess heat is flowing out from the ocean that is measured to be 12 to 14 miles (20 to 23 kilometers) beneath the surface at the north pole, and averaging 15.5 to 17.4 miles (25 to 28 kilometers) deep globally. This thick ice shell will make it difficult for any future mission to drill down to the ocean; entering via the tiger stripes might be the best bet, even if it might be more dangerous. A mission to launch in the 2040s is currently being considered by the European Space Agency.

The measured heat flow is 46 milliwatts per square meter, which compared to Earth is two-thirds the heat loss through our continental plates. When measured for the entirety of Enceladus, including the heat flow towards the south pole, the moon is losing 54 gigawatts across its entire surface area, which is a close match for the amount of energy that tidal heating puts into the moon. This careful balance is no coincidence, and implies the ocean has been stable, without freezing solid, for a very long time.

"Understanding how much heat Enceladus is losing on a global level is crucial to knowing whether it can support life," said Carly Howett of both the University of Oxford and the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona. "It is really exciting that this new result supports Enceladus' long-term sustainability, a crucial component for life to develop."

Although Cassini ended its 13-year mission in 2017 when it plunged into Saturn to prevent it from crashing onto and contaminating any of Saturn's moons, it seems that the spacecraft is still making discoveries.

"Eking out the subtle surface temperature variations caused by Enceladus' conductive heat flow from its daily and seasonal temperature changes was a challenge, and was only made possible by Cassini's extended missions," said Miles. "Our study highlights the need for long-term missions to ocean worlds that may harbor life, and the fact the data might not reveal all its secrets until decades later after it has been obtained."

The findings were published on Nov. 7 in Science Advances.

Based on the latest national forecast, skies will be mainly clear on Halloween night across about three-quarters of the contiguous (48) United States, as costumed kids arrive at the door looking for candy or some other Halloween treat. Temperatures will be mostly in the chilly 40's across the northern tier states, 50's for the central states and balmy 60's across the south. Unfortunately, exceptions for fair skies appear to be across New England, New York State, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, parts of the Ohio Valley and Great Lakes and western Washington State and Oregon, where mainly cloudy conditions — and even some rain or spotty showers may fall, accompanied by a gusty breeze.

The rest of the country, however, will be in fine shape with mid-autumn stars and constellations plus a waxing gibbous moon and a bright planet shining prominently in the early evening sky. If you plan to accompany children around your neighborhood, you might want to enlighten them by pointing out some of those objects that will be visible in the sky.

Better yet, if you have a telescope, give your visitors a treat of a different kind: Give them a close-up view of some of those celestial sights, starting with the moon and that bright planet.

At the top of the viewing list: The moon

On Halloween evening, as the shades of night are falling, you'll see Earth's nearest neighbor, our moon, hanging about one-third of the way up in the southeast sky. It will be in its waxing gibbous phase, 82% illuminated by the sun.

With a telescope at low power, you can point out to your young viewers the two most prominent of the myriads of craters that cover the lunar surface. Situated to the upper left of the center of the lunar disk, is the crater that has been dubbed "The Monarch of the Moon": Copernicus. Fifty-eight miles wide, 12,600 feet deep, surrounded by walls 14 miles thick.

The other lunar feature that truly "stands out," is evident over the lower limb of the moon, known as "The Metropolitan Crater": Tycho. It is among the brightest and youngest lunar impact craters, estimated to be 108 million years old, 53 miles wide and 15,400 feet deep. It is surrounded by a system of brilliant rays extending outward in all directions for many hundreds of miles. In several days, when the moon turns full, Tycho will give the moon the appearance of a peeled orange, with Tycho marking the point where the sections meet.

The Lord of the Rings

While the magnified views of the moon will certainly awe those who gaze at it through your eyepiece, take a moment and tell your young audience to make a clenched fist with their hands and then hold them out at arm's length. Now, tell them to go "two fists" to the left of the moon and they will see a bright star, shining with a yellow-white hue. Now, direct your telescope toward that "star" and when they gaze through the eyepiece, they will not be looking at a star at all, but a planet: Saturn.

This sixth planet out from the sun, just might be the most beautiful of all. Its rings are still readily evident, although currently they appear nearly edge-on with the south face tilted only about one-half degree to our line of sight. A telescope magnifying 30-power will bring them out; they appear as a bright line bisecting the ball of the planet. While this is far from their appearance compared to other years, the view should still look impressive to those who have never seen the ringed planet for themselves.

And watch out for fireballs!

Because they are active over Halloween, the Taurid meteor shower is sometimes called the "Halloween Fireballs." The bits of debris that make up the Taurids are a little larger than average, so they can result in brighter meteors and even fireballs, or exploding meteors (called bolides), that streak across the sky and leave incandescent trains in their wake.

While they are most active during the second week of November, a few forerunners can show up on Halloween night, darting from out of the east-northeast part of the sky. So, if you or your young visitors see something resembling a flare from a Roman candle sweeping majestically across the evening sky, it may very well be a Taurid meteor.

Related: How to photograph meteors and meteor showers

Helpful hints for young telescope viewers

In the September 2019 issue of The Astronomical League Magazine "Reflector," author Richard W. Schmude Jr., offered some tips for those who plan to do a public outreach for astronomy on Halloween:

"Firstly, children sometimes grab or touch the eyepiece, so use an inexpensive one. I gently warn children not to touch the telescope. In my area, parents have learned to tell their children not to touch the telescope. In some cases, a child will grab the eyepiece, causing the telescope to shift. For this reason, a Dobsonian telescope with a good finderscope is a good choice for Halloween outreach. A small stool or booster ladder may help very small viewers. Sometimes, parents hold their children up to look through the eyepiece. One may also place a monitor-connected video camera in the telescope and people can easily see the object on a screen." "Finally," adds Mr. Schmude, "I have my bag of goodies next to my telescope so that the children get two treats!"

Whatever your weather, Happy Halloween from all of us at Space.com!

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, Sky and Telescope and other publications.

A new laser concept could revolutionize how we explore the frozen worlds of our solar system.

When scientists dream of exploring the hidden oceans beneath the icy crusts of moons like Jupiter's Europa or Saturn's Enceladus — or other icy regions, such as permanently shadowed lunar craters or ice-bearing soils near the Martian poles — one major problem stands in the way: drilling through the ice.

Traditional drills and melting probes are heavy, complex and consume vast amounts of power. Now, researchers at the Institute of Aerospace Engineering at Technische Universität Dresden in Germany have developed a promising new solution — a laser-based ice drill that can bore deep, narrow channels into ice while keeping both mass and energy requirements low.

"We've created a laser drill that enables deep, narrow and energy-efficient access to ice without increasing instrument mass — something mechanical drills and melting probes cannot achieve," Martin Koßagk, lead author of the study, told Space.com in an email.

Mechanical drills become heavier with depth as they extend rods downward, and melting probes rely on long, power-hungry cables. The laser drill sidesteps both problems by keeping all instruments at the surface. This tech sends a concentrated beam into the ice, vaporizing it rather than melting it — a process known as sublimation.

The resulting vapor escapes upward through a narrow borehole just wide enough for gas and dust samples to be collected. Instruments on the surface can then analyze these samples for chemical composition and density, providing valuable clues about the thermal properties and formation history of the cosmic body being explored.

While lasers aren't the most energy-efficient tools, the beam vaporizes a mere pinhole of ice, meaning the drill uses far less total power than electric heaters. It also works faster in dust-rich layers that slow traditional melting probes, allowing it to bore much deeper without added mass or energy.

Therefore, a laser-based instrument "makes subsurface exploration of icy moons more realistic, allowing high-resolution analysis of ice composition and density, improving models of heat transport and ocean depth on bodies like Europa and Enceladus, and supporting studies of crust formation," Koßagk said. "On the moon or Mars, the laser drill can also extract subsurface material such as dust from ice-bearing craters or soils, enabling geological reconstruction beyond the surface layers."

The team's laser drill concept operates at roughly 150 watts (W), with a projected mass of about 9 pounds (4 kilograms), remaining constant regardless of depth — whether 33 feet (10 meters) or 6 miles (10 kilometers). However, Koßagk noted that a mass spectrometer for analyzing the gas and instruments for dust separation and analysis would increase the power requirement and mass.

Early tests show promise. The prototype drilled through ice samples about 8 inches (20 centimeters) long under vacuum and cryogenic conditions during laboratory experiments, and at greater depths in field tests in the Alps and Arctic, reaching depths of more than a meter in snow. In tests with 20 watts of laser power, the system reached drilling speeds near 1 meter per hour, and up to 3 meters per hour in loose or dusty ice.

A laser-based concept is not without limitations. In stone or layers of dust in which there is no ice that could be vaporized, the drilling process would be stopped. And, in those cases, a new borehole would need to be drilled from the surface that bypasses the obstacle.

"It is therefore important to operate the laser drill in conjunction with other measuring instruments," Koßagk told Space.com. "Radar instruments could look into the ice and locate larger obstacles, which the laser drill could then drill past."

Water-filled crevasses would also pose a challenge. When one is drilled into, the laser drill would have to pump out water as it flows in before it could continue to drill deeper. However, drilling into these areas could help to identify the chemistry of potential habitats for past or present microbial life. If bacteria ever existed, their remains might be detectable in the samples collected from a laser-drilled borehole.

To make this type of laser drill possible, next steps would be miniaturizing the system, developing a dust-separation unit and completing space-qualification tests. A compact payload version could one day ride aboard a lander to an icy moon, bringing scientists closer to decoding the secrets frozen beneath alien surfaces, Koßagk said.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, the same tool could even help predict avalanches. Field tests in cooperation with the Austrian Research Centre for Forests and Department of Natural Hazards in the Alps and the Arctic showed that the laser drill can measure snow density without digging a pit — and, mounted on a drone, it could collect data from dangerous slopes where humans can't safely go, Koßagk said.

Whether on Earth or in deep space, the goal is the same: to look beneath the surface and understand what's hidden in the ice.

The team's initial findings were published Sept. 8 in the journal Acta Astronautica.

Saturn isn't the only planet in our solar system with a ring system. While Saturn's rings are the most dramatic, the three other gas giants — Jupiter, Neptune, and Uranus — each have a ring system as well. But the fun doesn't stop there. Astronomers have also spotted rings around smaller celestial bodies: dwarf planets Haumea and Quaoar, as well as centaur Chariklo.

Now, 2060 Chiron, better known as just Chiron, is the latest celestial body to join the party. In analyzing observations of Chiron taken by Brazil's Pico dos Dias Observatory in 2023, astronomers have just spotted four rings plus diffuse material around this icy centaur, which was first sighted in 1977.

Centaurs are a class of celestial objects that are a cross between comets and asteroids, located between Jupiter and Neptune. Chiron, which orbits the sun between Saturn and Uranus, is composed of rock, water ice, and organic compounds, and it's approximately 125 miles (200 kilometers) in diameter.

Its rings — thought to be made of water ice and rocky material, potentially from a collision between Chiron and another celestial body — circle the centaur at approximately 170 miles (273 km), 202 miles (325 km), 272 miles (438 km) and 870 miles (1,400 km) from its center. The distant fourth ring, researchers note, might not ultimately be stable enough to be considered a ring, so further observations are necessary.

What's special about Chiron's rings is that they're still forming; this marks the first time astronomers have ever seen a ring system under formation. By comparing the 2023 observations to previous ones from 2022, 2018, and 2011, researchers determined that the ring system has been evolving rapidly.

"It is an evolving system that will help us understand the dynamical mechanisms governing the creation of rings and satellites around small bodies, with potential implications for various types of disk dynamics in the universe," astronomer Braga Ribas of the Federal University of Technology-Parana and the Interinstitutional Laboratory of e-Astronomy in Brazil, who co-authored a study on the research, told Reuters.

The team's research was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters on October 14, 2025.

The rules of chemistry on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, may have to be rewritten thanks to a new discovery that shows how frozen crystals of hydrogen cyanide can mix with liquid hydrocarbons, in a combination that had not been thought possible until now.

Experiments at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, coupled with computer simulations performed by researchers at the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, have shown how molecules of liquid ethane and methane, which fill the seas and lakes on Titan, can mix with crystals of hydrogen cyanide, which is frozen in the moon's frigid minus 179 degrees Celsius temperature.

Hydrogen cyanide is what's described as a polar molecule, in the sense that it has one side with a positive electric charge and another side that is negative. This means that it prefers to link up with other polar molecules, with opposite charges attracting.

On the other hand, methane and ethane, which are both hydrocarbon compounds (i.e. they are formed of atoms of hydrogen and carbon) are non-polar molecules, meaning that their electric charge is symmetrical, with both positive and negative charges on each side of their molecular structure.

Ordinarily, polar and non-polar substances don't mix. It's a little like oil remaining separate from water.

Hydrogen cyanide is formed in Titan's atmosphere via reactions with ultraviolet light from the sun, which breaks down hydrocarbons and reforms them as other molecules. Given that non-polar hydrocarbons are common throughout Titan's atmosphere and surface, scientists at JPL wanted to know what happens to the hydrogen cyanide after its creation. Yet their laboratory experiments mixing hydrogen cyanide with methane and ethane, performed at a temperature of minus 292 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 180 degrees Celsius), produced some surprising results that they didn't understand. So they approached chemist Martin Rahm and his group at Chalmers, who had prior expertise with hydrogen cyanide at cold temperatures, in their search for answers.

"This led to an exciting theoretical and experimental collaboration between Chalmers and NASA," said Rahm in a statement. "The question we asked ourselves was a bit crazy: Can the measurements be explained by a crystal structure in which methane or ethane is mixed with hydrogen cyanide? This contradicts a rule in chemistry, 'like dissolves like,' which basically means that it should not be possible to combine these polar and non-polar substances."

Rahm's computer simulations found that methane and ethane can penetrate into frozen hydrogen cyanide's crystal lattice, forming a new and stable structure called a "co-crystal."

"This can happen at very low temperatures, like those on Titan," said Rahm. "Our calculations predicted not only that the unexpected mixtures are stable under Titan's conditions, but also spectra of light that coincide well with NASA's measurements."

Titan is the only moon in the solar system to possess a thick atmosphere, and its hydrocarbon chemistry is similar to the prebiotic soup that scientists think existed on Earth before life began. Although the cold temperatures on Titan seem to preclude the kinds of chemical reactions that could lead to life as we know it, Titan's astrobiological worth is as a starting point, presenting what the molecular inventory might have been like on early Earth. Despite its toxicity to life now, hydrogen cyanide in particular is one of the building blocks of amino acids, which are used to construct proteins, and nucleobases in RNA and DNA.

"Hydrogen cyanide is found in many places in the universe, for example in large dust clouds, in planetary atmospheres and in comets," said Rahm. "The findings of our study may help us understand what happens in other cold environments in space. And we may be able to find out if other non-polar molecules can also enter the hydrogen cyanide crystals and, if so, what this might mean for the chemistry preceding the emergence of life."

Either way, the findings suggest even closer interactions between Titan's atmosphere, its frozen surface of ice dunes, and its lakes and seas of methane and ethane, than anyone had anticipated. When it arrives at Titan in 2034, NASA's new rotorcraft, called Dragonfly, will be making stops on the surface and sampling materials, including hydrogen cyanide ice, where it will be able to verify the new results and look for even more complex and unexpected chemistry.

The findings were published in July in the journal PNAS.

The case for a newborn ocean on Saturn's moon Mimas continues to build.

Research mapping the thickness of the world's icy crust not only provides a window for how old an existing ocean might be but also probes where the crust might be at its thinnest — the perfect spot for future missions to detect the ocean. At the same time, examination of Mimas' largest crater is providing further constraints on the age range of the potential ocean.

"When we look at Mimas, we don't see any of the things that we're accustomed to seeing in an ocean world," Alyssa Rhoden, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, said last month at the joint Europlanet Science Congress-Division for Planetary Sciences meeting.

Fellow Saturnian moon Enceladus and Jupiter's moon Europa — both thought to host oceans — are covered with a network of cracks and crevasses in their surface, signs that their volumes changed as ice melted into water. But the outer layer of Mimas, Saturn's smallest major moon, has few obvious breaks. Its craters also seem immutable, as though carved into rock instead of ice.

Last year, however, researchers announced that measurements from NASA's Cassini spacecraft supported a relatively newborn ocean on Mimas, an idea that scientists had started considering over the past decade as Cassini data continued streaming towards Earth. Early Cassini data had hinted towards a young ocean on the world as well, though scientists were initially skeptical. However, detailed observations are now making a strong case for an ocean on Mimas buried under 12 to 19 miles (20 to 30 kilometers) of solid ice.

Rhoden and her colleagues applied models based on Europa's heat shell thickness to Mimas in an effort to determine the thickness of the latter's ice shell and how heat flows across its surface. They found that, once melting began on the world, it proceeded quickly.

The melting of Mimas is intrinsically tied to its orbit. Although scientists are still trying to sort through how moons in the Saturn system formed, it is likely that any ocean the satellite was birthed with had long since frozen out. Scientists believe that today's possible ocean on Mimas isn't a remnant of its formation, however, but rather a recent arrival — one most likely birthed by changes in the moon's travels.

As a moon orbits a planet, the two objects gravitationally pull at one another. On Earth, the result is the changing ocean tides as our moon tugs at the water. Less obvious is how the Earth itself tugs at the solid rocky surface of the moon.

In the Saturnian system, it appears that something kicked Mimas into a less circular, more eccentric orbit at some point, changing how Saturn's gravity pulls on the solid ice. What scientists have found is that the push-and-pull of Saturn from the moon's new position creates heat that melts ice into water. This could very well form a newborn ocean. At the same time, gravity is slowly circularizing the orbit of the moon.

When the moon's path once again traces a circle, the tidal pull will no longer be capable of melting ice, and the nascent ocean scientists believe exists will slowly refreeze.

Rhoden and her colleagues studied how the eccentricity could have changed to recreate what is seen at Mimas today. They found that a strong shift in orbit would have completely melted the moon's surface, wiping out craters and other surface features completely. They found that Mimas' orbital change likely happened within the last 10 to 15 million years — an eyeblink on astronomical timescales, and one that fits previous estimates of the age of the young ocean.

The team also simulated how heat might move through the moon in an effort to determine how future missions could potentially detect a subsurface ocean. Their simulations suggest that heat flow in the ice — and the resulting melting and thinning of the shell — might not be straightforward. However, a future orbiter could potentially use measurements of the heat to detect the ocean beneath.

"It would be hard, but may be doable," Rhoden said.

The heart of the Death Star

Mimas is often called the "Death Star moon," in reference to its similarity to the iconic Star Wars space base. A giant crater stretches over a third the diameter of the moon, creating the apparent focal point of the evil machine. Herschel crater stretches 80 miles (130 kilometers) across, and is playing a key role in the discussion about the existence of Mimas' ocean.

The shape of a crater can provide a lot of information about the ground it is carved from. Not only did the impact excavate material onto the surface for later study, but its very rigidity can also allow researchers to determine how stiff ice in the region was at formation.

Simulations of crater formation on Mimas reveal the ice could not have been completely stiff when Herschel was carved. By modeling Mimas at various points in history, ranging from completely ocean-free to a watery world covered in ice, researchers found that Herschel likely formed when Mimas was on the cusp of melting.

Mimas "needs to be right on the tipping point," planetary scientist Adeene Denton, also at SwRI, told Space.com. "It can stay on that tipping point for millions of years, but it needs to be close."

Denton also presented her results at EPSC. The study, on which Rhoden was also an author, was recently published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

At the center of Mimas lies a central peak, created when something large slammed into the smallest of Saturn's major moons. Central peaks are a common feature of large craters, their formation a condition of the relative sizes of the impactor and its target. In previous work, Denton had established that a collision into solid ice would have created a peak-free crater.

However, impactors are also excavators, carving into the crust of the parent body. If Mimas had boasted an ocean beneath its surface, the collision would have sent water flying everywhere. The liquid would have been too relaxed to create the peak.

"Water can't make a structure like that," Denton said.

Herschel likely formed just as the ocean started melting, during a period when the ice was warmer but not quite liquid.

Denton's study increases the possible window of Herschel's formation from one million years to ten million. "That's still geologically short, but way better than one," Denton said at EPSC. "It's an order of magnitude game."

The study, combined with Rhoden's work on the moon's thermal interior and other work being done on the surface and interior, is helping researchers to better understand the misunderstood moon.

"All of these things are now building a coherent narrative about Mimas as a young ocean world," Denton said.

Sunday evening (Oct. 5) will bring us a fine opportunity to make a positive identification of what many consider to be the most beautiful of all telescopic objects, the ringed planet Saturn. And another celestial body will help point the way to it: the moon, which will be 24 hours from officially turning full — also this year's Harvest Full Moon.

As I have noted over the years here at Space.com, to the naked eye, Saturn does not possess any outstanding features to call attention to it. It lacks the dazzling, eye-popping brilliance of Venus or Jupiter and it does not have the fiery orange-yellow color of Mars. Instead, it looks like a bright yellowish-white "star". Around 8 p.m. local daylight time, look about one-quarter of the way up from the east-southeast horizon, and you'll spot it — even if you don't immediately realize it's the solar system's ringed wonder.

But on Sunday, Saturn will sit just below the moon, making it easy to track down. If the skies are clear, it's a perfect chance to invite friends and neighbors over to see two of the best sights in the night sky.

First, the moon

First, check out the moon. A full moon looks "flat" and one-dimensional and its brilliance may temporarily dazzle the eye. Sunday's moon is not quite full at 98.5% sunlit, but it will still appear dazzlingly bright. Probably the most noteworthy lunar feature is Tycho, a prominent lunar impact crater located in the southern lunar highlands, named after the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. It appears as a bright spot in the southern highlands with rays of bright material that stretch across much of the moon's lower limb.

Another prominent lunar impact crater is Copernicus, located slightly northwest of the center of the moon's Earth-facing hemisphere. It is easy to identify whenever it is sunlit, and along with Tycho, it is readily identifiable by its brilliant rays emanating from its center. Under high lighting, the Tycho and Copernicus rays are so dominant that they make other features difficult to locate.

Next comes Saturn

After you are done showing off the moon to your friends, it will be time to turn your telescope toward Saturn. Your clenched fist at arm's length is equal to roughly 10 degrees. So, Saturn will be situated less than "a quarter of a fist" (2.2 degrees) below the moon.

Saturn's famous ring system, as seen by us, had been growing narrower since 2017, and earlier this year it narrowed to nothing. On March 23, the rings appeared "edge-on" from our earthly perspective and in the days that followed, their angle of inclination toward Earth slowly increased, reaching 2.2 degrees on May 5. And yet, the rings were still all but invisible because while the south side of the rings was tipped toward us, the sun was illuminating the north side. On May 6, the sun began shining on the south side and the rings reappeared, albeit as nothing more than a thin bright line bisecting Saturn's disk.

On Sunday, any telescope with an eyepiece magnifying at least 30x will show the rings, although they still appear as nothing more than a bright narrow line, as their inclination angle has again diminished to just 1.4 degrees.

But be patient, for things will gradually improve in the years to come.

During the spring, Saturn reached what we might call the autumnal equinox of its orbit, at which its north pole was tilted forward, and its ring plane appeared edge-on toward the sun. A quarter of its 29.46-year orbit later, in April 2032, will be Saturn's winter solstice, when the southern hemisphere, and the southern face of the rings, will be most exposed to the sun and to us. At that time, the rings will be tilted at a maximum of 26.75 degrees in our direction (referred to as the maximum "Saturnicentric latitude").

And so, a year from now . . . and especially two years from now . . . the rings will be more readily visible and then, even for experienced, seasoned observers, the sight of Saturn's rings in a moderate or large telescope will bring surprise and astonishment!

They're not all that close

A final "gee-whiz" fact that you can reveal to your friends is that what you are seeing in Sunday's sky is an illusion of perspective. The moon and Saturn are nowhere near each other in space. The moon will be 227,000 miles (365,000 km) from Earth, while Saturn is more than 3,500 times farther away at 797 million miles (1.283 billion km).

Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, Sky and Telescope and other publications.

Editor's Note: If you get a great photo of the moon and Saturn and would like to share it with Space.com's readers, send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

Complex organic molecules that form part of the chain of chemical reactions that can result in life's building blocks have been found in the watery geysers of Enceladus, almost twenty years after the plumes were first sampled by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

Cassini's mission to the ringed planet Saturn ended in 2017, but scientists are still making findings buried deep in its treasure trove of archived data.

The discovery of these organic molecules ("organic" meaning they contain carbon) strengthens the case for the icy moon Enceladus being of astrobiological interest. In 2005, Cassini discovered that plumes of water vapor were spraying into space from huge fissures in Enceladus' surface. These fissures are believed to lead to a subsurface ocean within the 310-mile-wide (500-kilometer-wide) moon of Saturn, and it is this ocean that provides the water for the plumes. While some of the material from the plumes snows back onto the surface of Enceladus, most of it escapes into space where it forms a diffuse ring, called the E-ring, encircling Saturn at a greater distance from the planet than most of the rest of its system of rings.

"Cassini was detecting samples from Enceladus all the time as it flew through Saturn's E-ring," Nozair Khawaja of the Freie Universität Berlin and the University of Stuttgart in Germany said in a statement. "We had already found many organic molecules in these ice grains, including precursors for amino acids."

However, there has always been caution over the findings from the E-ring, because charged particles trapped in Saturn's magnetosphere bombard the icy particles in the E-ring, instigating chemical reactions. It had been unclear whether the organic molecules present in the ring had come from Enceladus' ocean or whether they had been formed by the reactions triggered by the radiation.

However, Cassini also flew directly through some of the plumes, so Khawaja went back to archive data from 2008 and the results from the spacecraft's Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA), which was an instrument led by scientists at the University of Stuttgart. With painstaking precision, Khawaja's team took apart the CDA data, and their new analysis found evidence for organic molecules that had been missed the first time around.

When Cassini flew through the plumes, icy grains struck the CDA's detector at 11 miles (18 kilometers) per second, which is faster than the 7.5 miles (12 kilometers) per second in the E-ring. These grains, only just spewed out of the ocean, contain pristine material that had not yet been altered by radiation.

"The ice grains contain not just frozen water, but also other molecules including organics," said Khawaja. "At lower impact speeds, the ice shatters and the signal from clusters of water molecules can hide the signal from certain organic molecules. But when the ice grains hit the CDA fast, water molecules don’t cluster and we have a chance to see these previously hidden signals."

The results showed that the same organic molecules present in the E-ring are also in the plumes, which tells scientists that they must originate from the ocean and are not a product of space radiation. Khawaja's team also found a variety of other organic molecules that had not been detected before in relation to Enceladus' plumes. These include aliphatic, (hetero)cyclic ester/alkalines, ethers/ethyl and possibly nitrogen- and oxygen-bearing compounds. On Earth, these molecules are part of a chain of chemical reactions that lead to life's building blocks.

"There are many possible pathways from the organic molecules we found in the Cassini data to potentially relevant compounds, which enhances the likelihood that the moon is habitable," said Khawaja.

There is a note of caution, however.

Recent research led by Grace Richards of the Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziale (INAF) in Rome has found the bombardment of radiation that scientists had been so concerned had altered the material in the E-ring can also create organic molecules on the surface of Enceladus. This includes on the ground in and around the fissures, called "tiger stripes," from which the geysers emanate. If Richards is correct, this would seriously confuse the issue and there would be no way to know whether the organic molecules detected by Cassini in the plumes are from the ocean or produced by radiation in the tiger stripes and are dragged into space by the plumes.

One way to solve the issue would be to land on Enceladus and sample fresh ice directly. Indeed, this is the plan, with the European Space Agency considering a mission that would feature an orbiter/lander combo arriving at Enceladus in 2054. Only by getting ground truth can scientists know for sure whether Enceladus' ocean really does feature the kind of complex chemistry that can potentially lead to life.

The new results from Cassini's Cosmic Dust Analyzer were published on Oct. 1 in the journal Nature Astronomy.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is setting the long-term goal of sending a spacecraft to Saturn's icy moon Enceladus to answer key science questions and drive the development of new technologies.

Enceladus is one of the most intriguing moons in the solar system due to the discovery by NASA's Cassini probe of plumes of water ice erupting from the moon's south polar region. The find indicates geological activity on Enceladus, along with a subsurface ocean of liquid water — and perhaps even an environment capable of sustaining life.

ESA is now targeting a mission to study enigmatic Enceladus as part of its Voyage 2050, the agency's long-term plan for space science activities, according to ESA officials at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) and Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) joint meeting, which was held in Helsinki in early September.

The Enceladus mission, though in its earliest stages, will need both an orbiter and a lander to answer major science questions, with the orbiter to be designed to sample material in the plumes emanating from the "tiger stripes" at the south pole.

An early mission configuration following first industrial studies calls for two launches of the largest variant of the Ariane 6 rocket, with spacecraft to dock in Earth orbit. Next, approval is needed at the ESA ministerial meeting in Bremen, Germany, in November, allowing a mission definition phase, leading to mission adoption in 2034 and a launch around 2042. The spacecraft would then arrive in the Saturn system in 2053, starting a tour of Enceladus and other moons, collection of plume material and preparation for a landing around 2058.

Jörn Helbert of ESA's European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) stated in a presentation at EPSC-DPS that, since March of this year, the ESA study team has been working with a newly selected payload working group and an expert committee to refine the science requirements and identify key technologies.

The Enceladus mission aims to advance European expertise in several scientific and technological fields, including in-orbit assembly, operating in extreme environments, landing technologies and novel scientific instrumentation, according to Helbert. He added that the development of these technologies will have wide-ranging applications beyond ESA's space science program.

Helbert noted that Enceladus has three necessary conditions for supporting life as we know it: the presence of liquid water, a source of energy and a specific set of chemical elements. An answer to the question of whether or not life exists below Enceladus's icy shell may, however, require decades of efforts in terms of planning, resources and innovation.

For a planet already famous for its beauty and mysteries, Saturn just became even more enigmatic.

Fresh observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) — the most detailed yet of the planet's upper atmosphere — reveal "dark beads" scattered through Saturn's glowing auroras and a star-shaped pattern with two arms mysteriously missing. Nothing like these features has ever been seen on another world.

"These features were completely unexpected and, at present, are completely unexplained," Tom Stallard, an astronomer at Northumbria University in the U.K. who led the study, said in a statement.

Scientists say studying these oddities could reveal important clues about how Saturn's magnetic bubble exchanges energy with its atmosphere, a process that powers the planet's shimmering auroras.

The findings were presented last week at the Europlanet Science Congress–Division for Planetary Sciences meeting in Helsinki, Finland.

A new puzzle in Saturn's atmosphere

To capture the images, a team of 23 scientists from the U.K., U.S. and France used JWST to observe Saturn for 10 continuous hours, roughly a full day on the fast-spinning giant, on Nov. 29, 2024. They tracked infrared light from hydrogen ions and methane, both of which offer valuable clues about chemistry and motion in the planet's skies.

About 680 miles (1,100 kilometers) above the clouds, the team spotted a chain of dark, bead-like patches embedded in Saturn's auroras. These beads resembled tiny holes in the light, staying stable for hours and drifting only a few degrees over the course of the day, the new study reports.

Some 310 miles (500 kilometers) lower, in the stratosphere, JWST revealed a sprawling star-shaped feature extending from the north pole toward the equator. Instead of six symmetrical arms, like a snowflake, only four reached outward — leaving two conspicuously missing and creating a lopsided star.

Together, the beads and star arms painted a bizarre, layered portrait of Saturn's skies. Intriguingly, the brightest "arm" of the star lined up directly with the darkest bead above it. "But it's not clear at this point whether they are actually linked or whether it's just a coincidence," Stallard said in the statement.

The researchers considered whether the beads might be caused by icy particles raining in from Saturn's so-called "E-ring," which is constantly replenished by geysers from the moon Enceladus. But the E-ring is too smooth and uniform to produce such patchy features, the study notes.

Instead, the dark beads may be the result of winds colliding in Saturn's upper atmosphere, creating turbulent zones that appear as dim patches in the aurora.

Intriguingly, when researchers mapped the star-shaped arms, they found the arms appeared to line up with the corners of Saturn’s mysterious hexagon, which is a massive six-sided cloud pattern at the planet’s north pole. First spotted by NASA's Voyager spacecraft in the 1980s, the hexagon has long puzzled scientists, and the new findings suggest it may be linked to these strange upper-atmosphere features.

Saturn's upper atmosphere is so faint that it has long been one of the hardest regions in the solar system to study. Even NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which orbited Saturn for 13 years, couldn't spot features like these. By detecting emissions thousands of times fainter than what ground-based telescopes can see, the JWST has opened an entirely new window into Saturn's mysterious skies, scientists say.

"JWST's incredible sensitivity has revolutionised our ability to observe these atmospheric layers, revealing structures that are completely unlike anything we've seen before on any planet," Stallard said in the statement.

With Saturn now near its equinox, a seasonal milestone that comes only once every 15 Earth years, when sunlight shines directly over the equator, scientists are eager to see how the beads and star arms evolve. Shifting sunlight could reshape these patterns as the northern hemisphere moves into autumn, so JWST observations are high on the researchers' wish list.

For now, the strange beads and missing arms remain unsolved, but thanks to JWST, astronomers finally have the images — and the mysteries — to chase.

A study about these results was published in late August in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

The vast shadow of Saturn's largest moon Titan will fall upon the upper extreme of the ringed gas giant in the early hours of Sept. 20, just one night before the planet shines at opposition in Earth's sky.

Once every 15 years, the orbital mechanics of the solar system brings the orbital path of Titan into an edge-on alignment with Earth, opening a brief window during which the moon's colossal shadow can be spotted periodically sweeping across the surface of the gas giant.

The next Titan shadow transit will begin at 1:09 a.m. EDT (0509 GMT) on Sept. 20, at which time the vast umbral silhouette will be visible on the upper left of the gas giant's disk, with the moon itself positioned just below, according to Sky & Telescope. Titan's dark footprint will take a little over two hours to traverse left to right across Saturn's cloud tops, before finally fading from view at 3:34 a.m. EDT (0734 GMT).

Saturn can be found shining high in the eastern sky, below the stars of the constellation Pisces as the transit begins on Sept. 20. However, you'll need a telescope with an aperture of 8-inches or more at 200X magnification to get a good view of the moon's shadow under decent atmospheric conditions, according to Hayden Planetarium instructor and lecturer Joe Rao.

If you don't have an instrument capable of resolving Titan's vast lunar shadow, there's absolutely no need to despair. Saturn will reach opposition, the point at which it appears opposite to the sun in Earth's sky, at At 1:37 a.m. EDT (0537 GMT) on Sept. 21, marking a perfect opportunity to explore the gas giant with either your eyes, binoculars or through the eyepiece of a telescope.

Saturn is at its brightest and closest to Earth during this time, which may make the world appear fractionally larger through the eyepiece of a telescope compared to when it is at a more distant point in its orbit.

The gas giant will be visible from sunset to dawn for viewers in the U.S. around opposition, providing ample opportunity to explore subtle variations in the cloud surface of the gigantic world. A larger telescope will also provide a fascinating view of Saturn's rings, which will appear as a bright line bisecting Saturn's amber disk, with the delicate structures visible in previous years hidden from view by its edge-on alignment.

Titan's final shadow transit is set to take place on Oct. 6 later this year. Stargazers hoping to see the event for themselves should check out our guide to the best telescope deals going in 2025.

Editor's Note: If you capture an image of the Titan shadow transit and want to share it with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s) along with your name, location and comments about your shoot to spacephotos@space.com.

Turn your eyes to the east in the early morning hours of Sept. 16 to see the moon conspire with Jupiter and the bright stars of the Gemini constellation to create a lopsided rectangular formation in the late summer sky.

Jupiter will rise above the eastern horizon roughly an hour-and-a-half after midnight on Sept. 16, with the slender crescent moon shining roughly five degrees above it and the twinkling forms of the bright stars Castor and Pollux close to its left. Remember, 10 degrees is approximately the same width as your clenched fist when held out against the night sky!

The moon, Jupiter, Castor and Pollux come together to form an irregular slanted rectangle in Earth's predawn sky, one that helps highlight the spectacular diversity of objects that are visible to the naked eye above us.

Viewing this scene with a telescope with an aperture of 4-inches or greater will allow you to resolve spectacular features in Jupiter's ever shifting cloud bands, along with its four large Galilean moons — Europa, Io, Ganymede and Callisto. The moon will afford an equally spectacular sight predawn on Sept. 16, with the brooding expanse of the 57-mile-wide (93 kilometer) Copernicus crater lying on the shadowy line separating night from day on the lunar surface, known as the terminator.

The stars of the constellation Orion will be visible to the right of Gemini in the hours following midnight, with the Hyades and Pleiades open star clusters visible above.

Saturn, meanwhile, will shine above the southwestern horizon as dawn approaches. Its sweeping ring system is currently oriented edge-on to Earth, making it appear as little more than a thin line bisecting the bright amber orb of the gas giant's atmosphere through the eyepiece of a telescope.

Photographers interested in capturing the majesty of the night sky should read our roundup of the best cameras and lenses for astrophotography. Those new to navigating the stars should also check out our guide to the top smartphone astronomy apps available in 2025.

Editor's Note: If you would like to share your astrophotography with Space.com's readers, then please send your photo(s), comments, and your name and location to spacephotos@space.com.

Enceladus, one of Saturn's small icy moons, spans just 300 miles (500 kilometers) — yet despite its modest size, it has become a star in the search for life beyond Earth. From cracks near its south pole, the moon blasts towering geysers of water vapor, ice and organic molecules into space, which are tantalizing hints of a hidden ocean that could, in theory, be habitable.

But new research presented this week at a planetary science conference in Finland shows that many of the organic molecules detected in these plumes could also form right on the moon's surface, driven by relentless radiation from Saturn's magnetic field. The results cast doubt on whether the plumes truly carry whispers of alien life, or merely echoes of lifeless chemistry on the frozen shell.

"Although this doesn't rule out the possibility that Enceladus' ocean may be habitable, it does mean we need to be cautious in making that assumption just because of the composition of the plumes," study lead Grace Richards of Italy's National Institute for Astrophysics said in a statement.

For their experiment, Richards and her colleagues recreated conditions on Enceladus in miniature inside a specialized laboratory in Hungary. Using an ice chamber, the team froze mixtures of water, carbon dioxide, methane and ammonia to a bone-chilling –420 degrees Fahrenheit (-253 degrees Celsius), mimicking frigid conditions near the moon's surface. The ices were then bombarded with high-energy "water-group ions," the same charged particles trapped around Saturn that constantly irradiate Enceladus.

To monitor the chemical changes induced by radiation, the researchers used infrared spectroscopy to observe the molecular "fingerprints," or spectra, of the ices. As radiation interacted with the samples, the spectra shifted, signaling the formation of new molecules.

Each of the five experiments produced carbon monoxide, cyanate, and ammonium — compounds that were detected in Enceladus' plumes by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in 2005. When the samples were gently warmed, more complex organics appeared, including carbamic acid, ammonium carbamate and potential amino acid precursors including methanol and ethanol, as well as molecules like acetylene, acetaldehyde and formamide, which are building blocks that could contribute to the chemistry of life.

"Although many of these products have not previously been detected on Enceladus' surface, some have been detected in Enceladus' plumes," Richards and her colleagues wrote in the paper. This leads to "questions about whether plume material is formed within the radiation-rich space environment or whether it originates in the subsurface ocean."

Crucially, the timescales necessary for radiation to drive these chemical reactions are comparable to how long ice remains exposed on Enceladus' surface or in its plumes, so distinguishing ocean-sourced organics from surface-born ones may be difficult, the study notes.

"It is likely that the composition of the subsurface ocean may not be accurately reflected by the composition of the emergent plume, or by material deposited on the surface immediately adjacent to the plume," the paper reads.

For astrobiologists, the results are both sobering and exciting. On one hand, they complicate the story that organics in the plumes are definitive signs of a life-friendly ocean. On the other, they highlight that rich, potentially life-relevant chemistry can thrive even in extreme, radiation-battered environments, thereby expanding the ways scientists think about where prebiotic molecules might form and why Enceladus remains a prime target for exploration.

NASA's Cassini mission, which ended in 2017 with a dramatic plunge into Saturn's atmosphere, gave humanity its first and only direct "taste" of Enceladus' geysers. But instruments onboard the spacecraft weren't designed to distinguish between molecules forged in the moon's presumably deep ocean and those cooked up in the icy shell.

These answers could come in the coming decades with future missions. One concept under consideration as part of the European Space Agency's Voyage 2050 program envisions a dedicated probe that could land on the surface and collect material ejected from the moon's hidden ocean. NASA has also previously studied an "Orbilander" concept designed to sample Enceladus' plumes from orbit.

Meanwhile, China is exploring a multi-part mission architecture that would include an orbiter, a lander and a deep-drilling robot that would attempt to reach the subsurface ocean to search for potential biosignatures.

This research is described in a paper published in the October 15 edition of the journal Planetary & Space Science.

Using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), astronomers have investigated a "failed star," or brown dwarf, nicknamed "The Accident." Their results may help solve a long-standing mystery surrounding the solar system's gas giants, Jupiter and Saturn.

Brown dwarfs get their unfortunate label of "failed stars" due to the fact that they form from collapsing clouds of gas and dust like stars, but they fail to gather enough matter to achieve the mass needed to trigger the nuclear fusion of hydrogen to helium in their cores, the process that defines what a star is. Brown dwarfs have masses between 13 and 80 times the mass of Jupiter, or 0.013 and 0.08 times the mass of the sun.

Yet even among these strange, hard-to-classify celestial objects, The Accident, located 50 light-years from Earth and believed to be between 10 billion and 12 billion years old, stands out. It is one of the oldest brown dwarfs ever seen, and has some features that have previously only been seen in young brown dwarfs. It also exhibits characteristics that have only previously been associated with ancient failed stars. These paradoxical features led to The Accident escaping detection until it was discovered by chance in 2020 by NASA's now-retired Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE).

The fact that The Accident is faint and unusual has led scientists to prioritize its study with the most powerful space telescope available, the James Webb Space Telescope. This led to the discovery of an unexpected molecule that initially defied identification, but was eventually determined to be a simple one called silane, formed when silicon and hydrogen bond.

Here's where Jupiter and Saturn come in.

For years, astronomers have expected to find silane in the solar system's gas giants. This molecule has also been missing around extrasolar planet, or "exoplanet," gas giants around other stars, and from other brown dwarfs.

Scientists are fairly certain silicon does exist in Jupiter and Saturn, but that it "hides" by binding with oxygen to create oxides like quartz. These oxides then seed clouds on hot gas giants that resemble dust storms on Earth, while on cooler gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, they sink below the lighter upper atmospheric layers of water vapor and ammonia clouds. That results in silicon sinking deep into the atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn and thus avoiding detection by spacecraft that have studied those planets up close.

However, even if this is the case, scientists have suggested light molecules of silicon, like silane, should be found in the upper atmospheres of gas giants and brown dwarfs.

As of now, The Accident is the first and only such object where this molecule has been identified. This could tell scientists something important about the conditions and chemistry of different worlds.

"Sometimes it's the extreme objects that help us understand what’s happening in the average ones," team leader Jacqueline Faherty, a researcher at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, said in a statement.

The detection of silane around The Accident's atmosphere suggests this silicon molecule does indeed form in brown dwarfs and planetary atmospheres. However, the team thinks that when oxygen is available, it bonds with silicon at such a rapid rate that none is left to bind with hydrogen and form silane.

The team theorizes that silane is present in The Accident because during the time period in which it formed, at least 10 billion years ago, the universe was saturated with much less oxygen than in later epochs. That means silicon would have been free to bind with hydrogen and form silane.

"We weren't looking to solve a mystery about Jupiter and Saturn with these observations," Peter Eisenhardt, study team member and a project scientist at NEOWISE, said in the statement. "A brown dwarf is a ball of gas like a star, but without an internal fusion reactor; it gets cooler and cooler, with an atmosphere like that of gas giant planets. We wanted to see why this brown dwarf is so odd, but we weren't expecting silane.

"The universe continues to surprise us."

The research demonstrates the usefulness of brown dwarfs, which wander the galaxy in isolation, as proxies for gas giant exoplanets that can be obscured by the light from the parent stars they orbit.

Indeed, brown dwarfs could also help investigate exoplanet habitability conditions despite not being able to support life themselves.

"To be clear, we're not finding life on brown dwarfs," Faherty explained. "But at a high level, by studying all of this variety and complexity in planetary atmospheres, we're setting up the scientists who are one day going to have to do this kind of chemical analysis for rocky, potentially Earth-like planets.

"It might not specifically involve silicon, but they're going to get data that is complicated and confusing and doesn’t fit their models, just like we are. They’ll have to parse all those complexities if they want to answer those big questions."

The team's research was published on Sept. 4 in the journal Nature.