Medals are awarded for all sorts of things: winning Olympic Gold, completing a fun run (well done Mrs Brown, if you’re reading this), and (apologies to non-UK readers) getting an eccentric DJ to ‘fix it’ for you to ride a rollercoaster in your pyjamas.

But a special kind of congratulations are due to Imperial College’s Michelle Dougherty who just won a medal for…and this takes some beating…helping discover an atmosphere on another planetary body.

The Royal Society likes to reward successful scientists, dishing out 10 medals, 6 awards, and 9 prize lectureships. As part of a bumper prize-giving announced today, Professor Dougherty receives the Royal Society’s Hughes Medal for heading the team behind the magnetometer aboard Cassini, still orbiting the Saturn system. This experiment uncovered a tenuous atmosphere on the moon Enceladus in 2005. If you were to stand on the moon’s surface, this is what you’d see:

There’s the atmosphere, looking all tenuous on the horizon.

The Hughes Medal is awarded annually to scientists who make important discoveries in the physical sciences. Dougherty follows in the footsteps of JJ Thomson, Niels Bohr, Enrico Fermi and Stephen Hawking.

Imperial College is stooping under the weight of multiple awards. Professor Edward Hinds picks up the Rumford Medal for pioneering experiments at super-cold temperature. Meanwhile, Professor Andrew deMello will deliver the 2009 Clifford Paterson Prize Lecture at the Royal Society, on the subject of nanotechnology.

Elsewhere in London, Professor Christopher Marshall of the Institute of Cancer Research receives the Buchanan Medal as a leading oncologist. Professor Eleanor Maguire from the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging picks up the Rosalind Franklin Award for services to cognitive neuroscience. And Linda Partridge has been selected to deliver the 2009 Croonian Lecture.

The full list of honours can be found on the Royal Society’s website.