コンデンセート超新星
Supernova Condensate is a blog about our place in the Universe. Of astronomy, chemistry and life in the big bad bubble of academia.
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Invader Xan is a molecular astrophysicist and part-time alien invader, who spends life looking at very small things on very large scales, and trying to better understand the chemistry of interstellar space.
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Tag Archives: saturn
An alien river…
As you may remember me saying before, Titan is not exactly like the Caribbean. But that isn’t to say that it’s not Earth-like. Indeed, the most fascinating thing about Titan is that in many ways, it’s very Earth-like indeed. To … Continue reading
Lord of the Rings
This is a completely gratuitous Saturn appreciation post. Just because. All image credits: NASA/ESA
Saturnshine
Give it a few hundred years, and I’m quite sure Saturn is destined to be one of the great tourist attractions of our solar system. And here’s why! This breathtaking image of our Solar system’s second largest planet shows Saturn … Continue reading
Windy worlds
Taking a look at our solar system, there are a few traits shared by numerous planets. One of these is the curious phenomenon of atmospheric superrotation. Planets with a dense atmosphere seem to have a constant prevailing wind in one … Continue reading
Cronian Cataclysm
Gas giants are turbulent places. While Jupiter is famous for its great red spot, a storm which is so large that we can see it from here on Earth, Saturn too is quite a stormy world. And every now and … Continue reading
Black and White
Iapetus, Saturn’s third largest moon, is a total enigma. For a start, it’s a strange walnut shape. Secondly, it seems to have a surface purely rendered in black and white. It looks a bit like snow on a mountaintop back … Continue reading
One more thing…
As an addendum to my previous post on prospective life on Titan, I should point out a couple of things from those papers I cited… Citing Tobie et al (2006), Mitri et al (2007) state that; “Since Cassini-Huygens indicates that … Continue reading
Totally Tropical Titan
Our solar system is full of mysteries, and it seems the more we look, the more we find, and the less we can explain. Most recently, the puzzles of the martian methane and the beautifully lethal venusian clouds have been … Continue reading
Keep dreaming
We live in a pretty special time in human history. Perhaps we were born too late to be true explorers or pioneers here on planet Earth. Perhaps we were born too early to be true explorers or pioneers across the … Continue reading
Giga hexagon!
Well, while I’m on the subject of hexagons, I might as well do what I do best and leap from the imperceptibly tiny to the immensely huge. There’s one hexagonal structure which is naturally formed and large enough to easily … Continue reading




















