Tag: Saturn moons
-
Decoding Deuterium in Saturn’s Ice: JWST Reveals Uniform D/H in Moon Water
Overview: Probing the D/H Ratio in Saturn’s Moon Ice The deuterium-to-hydrogen (D/H) ratio in water ice is a key fingerprint of how water formed and evolved in the early solar system. In giant planet systems, the D/H value can preserve the history of solid materials—ices and pebbles—that coalesced into moons, and it can reflect the…
-
Deuterated Water Ice on Saturn Satellites: JWST Reveals Uniform D/H Across Mid-Sized Moons
New JWST Spectroscopy Maps Water Deuteration on Saturn’s Moons In a groundbreaking study, astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) report robust detections of the 4.14 μm O-D stretch in water ice on the mid-sized satellites of Saturn. This spectral feature is analogous to the familiar 3 μm water O-H stretch and serves as…
-
Could Saturn’s Moon Mimas Hide a Newborn Ocean? A Mission in the Making
Is Mimas Hosting a Newborn Ocean? Saturn’s moon Mimas, long famous for its ominous “Death Star” crater Herschel, may be hiding a newborn ocean beneath its icy shell. New analyses of Cassini data, combined with advances in modeling tidal heating, suggest that the moon’s ice shell could have melted recently enough to form a liquid…
-
Unveiling Trapped CO2 on Saturn’s Moons: JWST Sheds Light on Ice, Organics, and Solar System Chemistry
Introduction: A New Window into Outer Solar System Chemistry The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is expanding our understanding of planetary surfaces far beyond Earth. A recent study focusing on the satellites of Saturn uses JWST spectra to identify solid-state CO2 trapped within diverse host materials across eight mid-sized moons. This work reveals that CO2…
-
JWST Sheds Light on Trapped CO2 Across Saturn’s Satellites
Overview The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has opened a new window into the chemistry of the outer solar system by detecting solid state carbon dioxide (CO2) on eight mid-sized Saturnian satellites. Spanning moons inside and outside the Iapetus–Phoebe region, these observations illuminate how CO2 can be trapped in various host materials at temperatures where…