erm.... a hexagon?
i swear i remember it being a pentagon last year. i very clearly remember looking at the pictures, because i was awestruck by it. a pagan friend and i were discussing it at length, looking at the pictures (on space.com and newscientist), just wondering about it and playing with cosmic discordian conspiracy theories. dammit, i hate it when reality glitches like this! i liked the pentagon better....
i swear i remember it being a pentagon last year. i very clearly remember looking at the pictures, because i was awestruck by it. a pagan friend and i were discussing it at length, looking at the pictures (on space.com and newscientist), just wondering about it and playing with cosmic discordian conspiracy theories. dammit, i hate it when reality glitches like this! i liked the pentagon better....
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25,000K Hexagon seen on Saturn
"And slowly, and surley, they drew their plans against us"
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2007-034
Pasadena, Calif. -- An odd, six-sided, honeycomb-shaped feature circling the entire north pole of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists with NASA's Cassini mission.
NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft imaged the feature over two decades ago. The fact that it has appeared in Cassini images indicates that it is a long-lived feature. A second hexagon, significantly darker than the brighter historical feature, is also visible in the Cassini pictures. The spacecraft's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer is the first instrument to capture the entire hexagon feature in one image - TEXT CONTINUES...
"And slowly, and surley, they drew their plans against us"
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2007-034
Pasadena, Calif. -- An odd, six-sided, honeycomb-shaped feature circling the entire north pole of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists with NASA's Cassini mission.
NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft imaged the feature over two decades ago. The fact that it has appeared in Cassini images indicates that it is a long-lived feature. A second hexagon, significantly darker than the brighter historical feature, is also visible in the Cassini pictures. The spacecraft's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer is the first instrument to capture the entire hexagon feature in one image - TEXT CONTINUES...
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Nasa discovers 'supersized' Saturn ring
Thin array of ice and dust particles lies at far reaches of Saturnian system, starting about 3.7 million miles from the planet
Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 7 October 2009 08.15 BST
A never-before-seen "supersized" ring around the planet Saturn has been discovered.
The thin array of ice and dust particles lies at the far reaches of the Saturnian system and its orbit is tilted 27 degrees from the planet's main ring plane, Nasa's jet propulsion laboratory said.
A spokeswoman, Whitney Clavin, said the ring was very diffuse and did not reflect much visible light, but the infrared Spitzer space telescope was able to detect it. No one had looked at its location with an infrared instrument until now, Clavin said.
The ring dust is very cold – minus 316 degrees Fahrenheit – but it shines with thermal radiation. The bulk of the material starts about 3.7m miles from the planet and extends outward about another 7.4m miles.
Saturn was previously known to have seven main rings and several faint, unnamed rings.
A paper on the discovery was to be published online today by the journal Nature. "This is one supersized ring," said one of the authors, Anne Verbiscer, an astronomer at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Her co-authors are Douglas Hamilton of the University of Maryland, College Park, and Michael Skrutskie, also of the University of Virginia.
Saturn's moon Phoebe orbits within the ring and is believed to be the source of the material.
The ring may answer the riddle of another moon, Iapetus, which has a bright side and a very dark side. The ring circles in the same direction as Phoebe, while Iapetus, the other rings and most of Saturn's other moons go the opposite way. Scientists think material from the outer ring moves inward and slams into Iapetus.
"Astronomers have long suspected that there is a connection between Saturn's outer moon Phoebe and the dark material on Iapetus," said Hamilton. "This new ring provides convincing evidence of that relationship."
The Spitzer mission, launched in 2003, is managed by the jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California. Spitzer is 66m miles from Earth in orbit around the sun.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/ ... -ring-nasa
Thin array of ice and dust particles lies at far reaches of Saturnian system, starting about 3.7 million miles from the planet
Associated Press
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 7 October 2009 08.15 BST
A never-before-seen "supersized" ring around the planet Saturn has been discovered.
The thin array of ice and dust particles lies at the far reaches of the Saturnian system and its orbit is tilted 27 degrees from the planet's main ring plane, Nasa's jet propulsion laboratory said.
A spokeswoman, Whitney Clavin, said the ring was very diffuse and did not reflect much visible light, but the infrared Spitzer space telescope was able to detect it. No one had looked at its location with an infrared instrument until now, Clavin said.
The ring dust is very cold – minus 316 degrees Fahrenheit – but it shines with thermal radiation. The bulk of the material starts about 3.7m miles from the planet and extends outward about another 7.4m miles.
Saturn was previously known to have seven main rings and several faint, unnamed rings.
A paper on the discovery was to be published online today by the journal Nature. "This is one supersized ring," said one of the authors, Anne Verbiscer, an astronomer at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Her co-authors are Douglas Hamilton of the University of Maryland, College Park, and Michael Skrutskie, also of the University of Virginia.
Saturn's moon Phoebe orbits within the ring and is believed to be the source of the material.
The ring may answer the riddle of another moon, Iapetus, which has a bright side and a very dark side. The ring circles in the same direction as Phoebe, while Iapetus, the other rings and most of Saturn's other moons go the opposite way. Scientists think material from the outer ring moves inward and slams into Iapetus.
"Astronomers have long suspected that there is a connection between Saturn's outer moon Phoebe and the dark material on Iapetus," said Hamilton. "This new ring provides convincing evidence of that relationship."
The Spitzer mission, launched in 2003, is managed by the jet propulsion laboratory in Pasadena, California. Spitzer is 66m miles from Earth in orbit around the sun.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/ ... -ring-nasa
ramonmercado
CyberPunk
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Wait for it....
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Giant moon collision 'may have formed Saturn's rings'
By Katia Moskvitch, Science reporter, BBC News
Saturn's rings may have formed when a large moon with an icy mantle and rocky core spiralled into the nascent planet.
A US scientist has suggested that the tidal forces ripped off some of the moon's mantle before the actual impact.
The theory could shed light on the rings' mainly water-ice composition that has puzzled researchers for decades.
The scientist announced her idea at a conference in Pasadena, US.
Though the rings are now thought to consist of 90-95% water-ice, Robin Canup of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder said the slight rock content is due to the interplanetary dust and constant "bombardment … by micrometeoroids".
"[The rings] must have formed as essentially pure ice," she said at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Science.
Just how these icy rings came about has always been a mystery.
"You would've expected that if an object, let's say an asteroid or even a satellite had broken up, there would be a large rock component," Carl Murray from Queen Mary, University of London, one the astronomers on the Cassini mission, told BBC News.
etc...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11488797
Makes sense to me. The rings lie inside the Roche limit, where tidal forces will disrupt any loosely aggregated bodies. But the tidal forces are too small to disrupt solid rocky bodies.
By Katia Moskvitch, Science reporter, BBC News
Saturn's rings may have formed when a large moon with an icy mantle and rocky core spiralled into the nascent planet.
A US scientist has suggested that the tidal forces ripped off some of the moon's mantle before the actual impact.
The theory could shed light on the rings' mainly water-ice composition that has puzzled researchers for decades.
The scientist announced her idea at a conference in Pasadena, US.
Though the rings are now thought to consist of 90-95% water-ice, Robin Canup of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder said the slight rock content is due to the interplanetary dust and constant "bombardment … by micrometeoroids".
"[The rings] must have formed as essentially pure ice," she said at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Science.
Just how these icy rings came about has always been a mystery.
"You would've expected that if an object, let's say an asteroid or even a satellite had broken up, there would be a large rock component," Carl Murray from Queen Mary, University of London, one the astronomers on the Cassini mission, told BBC News.
etc...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-11488797
Makes sense to me. The rings lie inside the Roche limit, where tidal forces will disrupt any loosely aggregated bodies. But the tidal forces are too small to disrupt solid rocky bodies.
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Oxygen found on Saturn's moon Rhea
Nasa's Cassini probe has scooped oxygen from the thin atmosphere of Rhea – the first time the gas has been detected directly on another world
Ian Sample, science correspondent guardian.co.uk, Thursday 25 November 2010
A spacecraft has tasted oxygen in the atmosphere of another world for the first time while flying low over Saturn's icy moon, Rhea.
Nasa's Cassini probe scooped oxygen from the thin atmosphere of the planet's moon while passing overhead at an altitude of 97km in March this year.
Until now, wisps of oxygen have only been detected on planets and their moons indirectly, using the Hubble space telescope and other major facilities.
Instruments aboard Cassini revealed an extremely thin oxygen and carbon dioxide atmosphere that is sustained by high-energy particles slamming into the moon's surface and kicking up atoms, molecules and ions.
Astronomers have counted 62 moons orbiting Saturn. At 1500km wide, Rhea is the second largest and is thought to be made almost entirely of ice.
"This really is the first time that we've seen oxygen directly in the atmosphere of another world," said Andrew Coates, at UCL's Mullard Space Science Laboratory, a co-author of the study published in the journal Science.
"Active, complex chemistry involving oxygen may be quite common throughout the solar system and even our universe," said team leader Ben Teolis of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "Such chemistry could be a prerequisite for life. All evidence from Cassini indicates that Rhea is too cold and devoid of the liquid water necessary for life as we know it."
Rhea's atmosphere makes it unique in the Saturn system. Only Rhea and Titan, the largest Saturnian moon, have enough mass to hold on to an atmosphere with their gravity. Titan, however, has a very thick nitrogen and methane atmosphere, with very little carbon dioxide and oxygen.
Astronomers have previously used telescopes to detect oxygen in the atmospheres of Jupiter's moons Europa and Ganymede, but similar searches drew a blank on Rhea because the concentration of the gas was so low.
According to instruments aboard Cassini, every cubic metre of Rhea's atmosphere contains around 50bn oxygen molecules and 20bn carbon dioxide molecules.
The carbon dioxide may come from dry ice trapped within the moon, or be produced by high-energy particles striking water ice on Rhea. Another source could be carbon-rich materials deposited by tiny meteors that have bombarded Rhea's surface.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/ ... -moon-rhea
Free oxygen is usually considered a by-product of life. But if it is released by non-biological processes, as on Rhea, it would severely decrease the chance of life evolving, as it is such a reactive element.
Nasa's Cassini probe has scooped oxygen from the thin atmosphere of Rhea – the first time the gas has been detected directly on another world
Ian Sample, science correspondent guardian.co.uk, Thursday 25 November 2010
A spacecraft has tasted oxygen in the atmosphere of another world for the first time while flying low over Saturn's icy moon, Rhea.
Nasa's Cassini probe scooped oxygen from the thin atmosphere of the planet's moon while passing overhead at an altitude of 97km in March this year.
Until now, wisps of oxygen have only been detected on planets and their moons indirectly, using the Hubble space telescope and other major facilities.
Instruments aboard Cassini revealed an extremely thin oxygen and carbon dioxide atmosphere that is sustained by high-energy particles slamming into the moon's surface and kicking up atoms, molecules and ions.
Astronomers have counted 62 moons orbiting Saturn. At 1500km wide, Rhea is the second largest and is thought to be made almost entirely of ice.
"This really is the first time that we've seen oxygen directly in the atmosphere of another world," said Andrew Coates, at UCL's Mullard Space Science Laboratory, a co-author of the study published in the journal Science.
"Active, complex chemistry involving oxygen may be quite common throughout the solar system and even our universe," said team leader Ben Teolis of Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, Texas. "Such chemistry could be a prerequisite for life. All evidence from Cassini indicates that Rhea is too cold and devoid of the liquid water necessary for life as we know it."
Rhea's atmosphere makes it unique in the Saturn system. Only Rhea and Titan, the largest Saturnian moon, have enough mass to hold on to an atmosphere with their gravity. Titan, however, has a very thick nitrogen and methane atmosphere, with very little carbon dioxide and oxygen.
Astronomers have previously used telescopes to detect oxygen in the atmospheres of Jupiter's moons Europa and Ganymede, but similar searches drew a blank on Rhea because the concentration of the gas was so low.
According to instruments aboard Cassini, every cubic metre of Rhea's atmosphere contains around 50bn oxygen molecules and 20bn carbon dioxide molecules.
The carbon dioxide may come from dry ice trapped within the moon, or be produced by high-energy particles striking water ice on Rhea. Another source could be carbon-rich materials deposited by tiny meteors that have bombarded Rhea's surface.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/ ... -moon-rhea
Free oxygen is usually considered a by-product of life. But if it is released by non-biological processes, as on Rhea, it would severely decrease the chance of life evolving, as it is such a reactive element.
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Saturn's hexagon
Great picture of the north pole of Saturn, showing the strange hexagon formation of clouds around the pole:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120122.html
The picture is a composite of images taken by the Cassini spacecraft. There's a link on the page showing a (very short) movie of cloud movement around the formation.
Great picture of the north pole of Saturn, showing the strange hexagon formation of clouds around the pole:
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120122.html
The picture is a composite of images taken by the Cassini spacecraft. There's a link on the page showing a (very short) movie of cloud movement around the formation.
Mythopoeika
I am a meat popsicle
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- Inside a starship, watching puny humans from afar
Yeah, it's very odd - but I think it's a product of Saturn's very powerful magnetic field at the poles.
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- Jul 4, 2009
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- 151
Yeah possibly, although scientists haven't yet come up with a plausible mechanism for it and are mostly scratching their heads over it atm.
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Jerry_B said:
Interesting vid Jerry :yeay:
kamalktk
Antediluvian
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Here's Bohr's experiment.
Geometric whirlpools revealed
Recipe for making symmetrical holes in water is easy.
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060515/full/news060515-17.html
Geometric whirlpools revealed
Recipe for making symmetrical holes in water is easy.
http://www.nature.com/news/2006/060515/full/news060515-17.html
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kamalktk said:
Fascinating article! I find it hard to believe that the atmosphere of Saturn is rotating at between 1 and 7 revolutions a second though
kamalktk
Antediluvian
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Bohr couldn't replicate the conditions on Saturn because he didn't have 4 billion years to stir things, and didn't spin the fluid up to 1800 km/hSynchronous said:kamalktk said:
Fascinating article! I find it hard to believe that the atmosphere of Saturn is rotating at between 1 and 7 revolutions a second though
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kamalktk said:Bohr couldn't replicate the conditions on Saturn because he didn't have 4 billion years to stir things, and didn't spin the fluid up to 1800 km/hSynchronous said:kamalktk said:
Fascinating article! I find it hard to believe that the atmosphere of Saturn is rotating at between 1 and 7 revolutions a second though
Aye, it'd be interesting to see the experiment on a larger scale.
ramonmercado
CyberPunk
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Soon the number of hexagons will increase exponentially, explode and Saturn will become a new Sun!
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Xanatic_ said:
Gets my vote - imagine the amount of honey!
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Threads merged.
Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus (the Titan father of Zeus), the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's symbol represents the Roman god's sickle.
Saturn, along with Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, is classified as a gas giant. Together, these four planets are sometimes referred to as the Jovian, meaning "Jupiter-like", planets. Saturn has an average radius about 9 times larger than the Earth's. While only 1/8 the average density of Earth, due to its larger volume, Saturn's mass is just over 95 times greater than Earth's.
Because of Saturn's large mass and resulting gravitation, the conditions produced on Saturn are extreme if compared to Earth. The interior of Saturn is probably composed of a core of iron, nickel, silicon and oxygen compounds, surrounded by a deep layer of metallic hydrogen, an intermediate layer of liquid hydrogen and liquid helium and finally, an outer gaseous layer.
Electrical current within the metallic-hydrogen layer is thought to give rise to Saturn's planetary magnetic field, which is slightly weaker than Earth's magnetic field and approximately one-twentieth the strength of the field around Jupiter.
The outer atmosphere is generally bland in appearance, although long-lived features can appear. Wind speeds on Saturn can reach 1,800 km/h, significantly faster than those on Jupiter.
Saturn has nine rings, consisting mostly of ice particles with a smaller amount of rocky debris and dust. Sixty-two known moons orbit the planet; fifty-three are officially named. This is not counting hundreds of "moonlets" within the rings. Titan, Saturn's largest and the Solar System's second largest moon (after Jupiter's Ganymede), is larger than the planet Mercury and is the only moon in the Solar System to possess a significant atmosphere.
Saturn, along with Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, is classified as a gas giant. Together, these four planets are sometimes referred to as the Jovian, meaning "Jupiter-like", planets. Saturn has an average radius about 9 times larger than the Earth's. While only 1/8 the average density of Earth, due to its larger volume, Saturn's mass is just over 95 times greater than Earth's.
Because of Saturn's large mass and resulting gravitation, the conditions produced on Saturn are extreme if compared to Earth. The interior of Saturn is probably composed of a core of iron, nickel, silicon and oxygen compounds, surrounded by a deep layer of metallic hydrogen, an intermediate layer of liquid hydrogen and liquid helium and finally, an outer gaseous layer.
Electrical current within the metallic-hydrogen layer is thought to give rise to Saturn's planetary magnetic field, which is slightly weaker than Earth's magnetic field and approximately one-twentieth the strength of the field around Jupiter.
The outer atmosphere is generally bland in appearance, although long-lived features can appear. Wind speeds on Saturn can reach 1,800 km/h, significantly faster than those on Jupiter.
Saturn has nine rings, consisting mostly of ice particles with a smaller amount of rocky debris and dust. Sixty-two known moons orbit the planet; fifty-three are officially named. This is not counting hundreds of "moonlets" within the rings. Titan, Saturn's largest and the Solar System's second largest moon (after Jupiter's Ganymede), is larger than the planet Mercury and is the only moon in the Solar System to possess a significant atmosphere.
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Viewpoint: Saturn snapped as Earth smiled
The US space agency (Nasa) has released a spectacular new picture of the Planet Saturn, acquired by the Cassini spacecraft in July. The image was produced as part of The Day The Earth Smiled Project, which was led by Dr Carolyn Porco. She describes how and why the picture was put together.
...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24913141
The US space agency (Nasa) has released a spectacular new picture of the Planet Saturn, acquired by the Cassini spacecraft in July. The image was produced as part of The Day The Earth Smiled Project, which was led by Dr Carolyn Porco. She describes how and why the picture was put together.
...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24913141
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Birth of 'new Saturn moon' witnessed
Scientists say they have discovered what could be the birth of a new moon in the rings of Saturn.
Informally named Peggy, the object would become the 63rd moon in Saturn's orbit if confirmed.
The evidence comes from a black-and-white image of the outermost ring captured by the Cassini spacecraft.
"Witnessing the birth of a tiny moon is an exciting, unexpected event," said Linda Spilker of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Scientists noticed a bump or distortion on the edge of the ring which they believe indicates the presence of some kind of object.
It is estimated that Peggy may be about half a mile in diameter and it is almost certainly made of ice.
Lead scientist Prof Carl Murray of Queen Mary University of London told BBC News that this was the first time this kind of observation had been made:
"All we know is that something is there - what we can track is the effect of an object in the rings perturbing the particles around it, creating a disturbance in the rings."
The disturbance in the edge of the ring is 20% brighter than its surroundings and about 1,207km (750 miles) long and 9.7km (six miles) wide.
Details were published in the journal Icarus.
The significance of the discovery is that the image may have captured the moment of the moon's birth amid the clouds of ice particles making up the rings.
According to Prof Murray, "the rings are icy, more than 90% pure water-ice, so with the particles colliding you have the ideal conditions for objects to accrete, for objects to form in this region and images do show this kind of clumpiness".
The most obvious theory is that because the rings contain so much ice, and because many of Saturn's moons are composed primarily of ice, the rings provide the nursery for new moons before they migrate to more distant orbits.
What happens to Peggy now is not clear. If it continues to orbit inside the rings, it runs the risk of collisions with smaller lumps of ice with the likelihood of the tiny moon disintegrating.
However, if Peggy escapes beyond the rings, it will run the gauntlet of drifting through the paths of much larger moons.
In any event, the moon's small size means that if it does migrate beyond the rings, it will be impossible for the scientists to keep track of it.
Prof Murray said: "Peggy is trying to make its own way in the world. If it escapes, it has to get past some much larger predecessors and if it avoids them it may still get hit by a meteoric bombardment.
"Babies are safer in the womb but they have to leave sometime - and the paradox is that get to safety Peggy has to pass between other much larger objects."
One hope is that during one of Cassini's final orbits, in 2016, the spacecraft's narrow angle camera may be in a position to offer a far more detailed view of the outermost "A" ring providing a chance to observe Peggy's fate.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27056698
Scientists say they have discovered what could be the birth of a new moon in the rings of Saturn.
Informally named Peggy, the object would become the 63rd moon in Saturn's orbit if confirmed.
The evidence comes from a black-and-white image of the outermost ring captured by the Cassini spacecraft.
"Witnessing the birth of a tiny moon is an exciting, unexpected event," said Linda Spilker of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).
Scientists noticed a bump or distortion on the edge of the ring which they believe indicates the presence of some kind of object.
It is estimated that Peggy may be about half a mile in diameter and it is almost certainly made of ice.
Lead scientist Prof Carl Murray of Queen Mary University of London told BBC News that this was the first time this kind of observation had been made:
"All we know is that something is there - what we can track is the effect of an object in the rings perturbing the particles around it, creating a disturbance in the rings."
The disturbance in the edge of the ring is 20% brighter than its surroundings and about 1,207km (750 miles) long and 9.7km (six miles) wide.
Details were published in the journal Icarus.
The significance of the discovery is that the image may have captured the moment of the moon's birth amid the clouds of ice particles making up the rings.
According to Prof Murray, "the rings are icy, more than 90% pure water-ice, so with the particles colliding you have the ideal conditions for objects to accrete, for objects to form in this region and images do show this kind of clumpiness".
The most obvious theory is that because the rings contain so much ice, and because many of Saturn's moons are composed primarily of ice, the rings provide the nursery for new moons before they migrate to more distant orbits.
What happens to Peggy now is not clear. If it continues to orbit inside the rings, it runs the risk of collisions with smaller lumps of ice with the likelihood of the tiny moon disintegrating.
However, if Peggy escapes beyond the rings, it will run the gauntlet of drifting through the paths of much larger moons.
In any event, the moon's small size means that if it does migrate beyond the rings, it will be impossible for the scientists to keep track of it.
Prof Murray said: "Peggy is trying to make its own way in the world. If it escapes, it has to get past some much larger predecessors and if it avoids them it may still get hit by a meteoric bombardment.
"Babies are safer in the womb but they have to leave sometime - and the paradox is that get to safety Peggy has to pass between other much larger objects."
One hope is that during one of Cassini's final orbits, in 2016, the spacecraft's narrow angle camera may be in a position to offer a far more detailed view of the outermost "A" ring providing a chance to observe Peggy's fate.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-27056698