As it struggles to come to terms with the loss of its manned space program and begins to divert funds to other missions, NASA has extended the Cassini-Huygens Mission at Saturn until 2017. Cassini has been returning beautiful photos of the ringed planet as well as important data on the composition and behavior of its moons since 2004. The probe arrived at Saturn in June of 2004 carrying the European-built Huygens probe designed to land on Titan. In January of 2005, Huygens became the first man-made object to penetrate the atmosphere and land on the surface of Titan. The first photos of Titan’s surface revealed a hazy world sculpted by lakes of liquid methane and mountains made of rock-hard ice and exposed a place that is considered by many scientists to be the closest example we have to what our own little world looked like in its primordial stages of development. The 2011 extension known as Cassini-Solstice will be the second extension since the probe arrived and is sure to continue a Cassini tradition of giving us incredible views of the jewel of our solar system.

CASSINI-HUYGENS 2010 MISSION HIGHLIGHTS 

• Rhea Flyby – March 2
• Titan Flyby – April 5, May 20, June 5, June 21, July 7, September 24, November 11 
• Enceladus Flyby – April 28, May 18, August 13, November 30, December 21

Saturn is primed to put on a dazzling show for professional and amateur astronomers this year. Right now, it is rising through Virgo in the eastern sky just after 2245 EST. While the ringed planet always makes for wonderful observing with even the most modest of telescopes, it will be perfectly positioned to show off its magnificant rings around April. To celebrate the event, the Cincinnati Observatory will be hosting “Saturnday” on April 17-April 24 to give the general public an opportunity to see it through a professional-grade telescope. The cost of the event is $6 per person. You can visit the observatory’s website to learn more information. Weather permitting, nightShifted Astronomy will be set up in the Dayton area around that time. Watch the blog and events calendar for details.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Cassini-Equinox

Astronomers working at NASA’s Infrared Observatory at Mauna Kea in Hawaii have announced an exciting new ability to identify molecules in the atmosphere of planets around distant stars using small, ground-based observatories. The new method used a spectrograph to isolate the unique light signatures generated by carbon dioxide and methane in the atmosphere around planet HD189733b located around the star HD 98505 in the Constellation Vulpecula. Spectrographs have been used to detect molecules in the atmospheres of dozens of exoplanets, but a new calibration method developed by the research team has allowed for extremely sensitive atmospheric characterization research to be conducted using Earth-based facilities. The research is extremely promising since the Mauna Kea Observatory ranks as #40 among ground based telescopes which mean that larger and more precise scopes should be able to detect compounds and characterize the atmosphere of exoplanets with greater efficiency and accuracy. Right now, a majority of planets orbiting other stars are Jupiter-like and orbit very close to their host stars. Using this new research method, astronomers hope to use larger telescopes to detect rocky, Earth-like planets.

HIP 98505 is a magnitude 7.65 orange-dwarf star located in the Constellation Vulpecula about two degrees from 13 Vulpeculae. If you would like to see the star for yourself, it rises at 0425 EST in the east-northeast sky and travels about ninety degrees before sunrise at 0615 EST. I recommend a medium to large telescope and would begin looking for this star without a filter.

Image Credit: Starry Night Professional