aesmael | Entries tagged with moons

Lately have been using this image as my desktop background:

It is an image I took with Celestia two years ago and, coming across again, seemed like good background material.

The main object in the foreground is of course Europa, mostly eclipsing Jupiter in the background. To the left is the Sun, and to the left of that another disk is visible. I recreated this shot in Celestia recently to verify (the time displayed in the image is local to Sydney, so I had to adjust the clock settings in Celestia to get to the right moment, but if you leave them unaltered and enter the time shown you get a shot which is nearly a mirror image of this one) that the other disk visible is indeed Io and not one of the other Galilean moons.

I think it is wonderful that there are places in the solar system we could go and see more than two objects visible in the sky as more than points.

Current Mood: happy

Originally published at a denizen's entertainment. You can comment here or there.

In the past week I have been surprised by two pieces of news concerning Saturn and rings.

First, from the Planetary Society Blog: findings which might be evidence for a posited ring around Rhea. As described in that article, a series of equatorial spots on Rhea bright in ultaviolet light might be evidence of collisions from ring particles orbiting the moon. These particles, if they exist, would occupy a size and distribution which makes them particularly difficult to detect visually directly with the instruments we currently have available.

It seems the idea of rings around Rhea has been around longer than I have been aware of. Apparently they were originally proposed to explain a decreased electron flux in the vicinity of Rhea back in 2005, and I sure didn't realise there was this much evidence already. Would be very exciting indeed to get a direct and definite confirmation about this.

Sadly given how difficult these rings are proving to image, it is unlikely there will ever be beautiful views of the Rhean ringscape. We shall just have to comfort ourselves with the knowledge of something wonderful.

The other news is the discovery of a new ring around Saturn itself. This one, discovered by the Spitzer Space Telescope, is the largest and most diffuse planetary ring yet discovered. The details can be found in this press release. Basically it is very large and very faint, and only detected because of its cool infrared glow. I am concerned that the end of the release specifies this information was gathered before Spitzer ran out of coolant, and whether this means we won't be able to obtain further observations of the ring for a while. It might take us a long time to discover if this ring 'only' spans from six to twelve million kilometres from Saturn, or if that were merely its brightest, densest part.

Apart from the amazement of a whole new feature being discovered, this is particularly intriguing because Saturn's moon Phoebe orbits within this ring and is thought to be the source of its material (via dust knocked off from impacts, most likely). If so, and depending on what else is found, this ring could be a key part of one of astronomy's longer-standing mysteries: the two faces of Iapetus. Although it has long been suspected that material from Phoebe deposited on Iapetus is the reason that moon has one bright hemisphere and one dark (more or less), I think this ring is the first actual detection of a possible mechanism for the transfer of this material.

If that bears out I think I will finally have an answer to a mystery I have been intrigued by since I was a young child; for a long time Iapetus has been one of the solar system bodies I was most fascinated by.

Emily Lakdawalla reports on the recent discovery of four (as yet unnamed) moons orbiting Saturn. So far that makes 60, none of which can make a decent cocktail.
These new moons, like many of Saturn's, are about half the size of Deimos, which is pretty small. The curious should click through if they wish to see an animation of the discovery images for one of the newly found satellites.

Current Mood: excited
Current Location: floor
Current Music: The Roundabout - Enigma [Le Roi est mort, vive le Roi]

I was watching an old tape of Transformers last night. It doesn't seem too likely to me that a kids show made these days would blithely show a good character gambling (and cheating at it) and then going for force when they still don't get what they want, let alone having the main role model character endorse the activity at the end of the episode.

News from Enceladus (AKA that moon the name of which I always forget how to spell): Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society writes about two papers, one suggesting that chemicals detected in Enceladus' geysers indicate warmth and chemical activity (warm here apparently means 300 to 575 degress Celsius, wow!). The other paper deduces from the lower elevation of the moon's south polar region that there could be a reservoir of melted water beneath the surface (this is where the geysers are active, I believe)

And now for something I forgot to include in my post last night:

Story Linkdex
fiction tag
A Day in the Life
Meditation
Rain
Maricia
'Vhrydal' Sketch
'Krellain + Than' Sketch
Sliced
untitled story
First
Jayde

Epic Fantasy

Black Riders

Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Transformers (in background)

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Hee!

More importantly, watch this wondrous video of Saturn's moons in motion. I owe

lantyssa something wonderful for finding it.

Post Scriptum: Since I am posting sciency linky-links, here is my current desktop.

Current Mood: excited
Current Music: Investigating Paranormal Claims - SETI Science + Skepticism

I received my callback and I did not get the job. I think the guy said they have decided not to take anyone at the moment so I suppose it is not a personal rejection, except insofar as I am not excellent enough to make them hire me regardless :-P They did say they would keep my details on file (don't they always?) and I said even if I did find another job in the meantime I would still be interested in the job. Oh - I should have told them yesterday that I like the in-store music. Do you think that would have helped?

In much much more exciting news, Emily Lakdawalla at the Planetary Society Weblog writes about the finding of dark patches on Titan which are probably lakes of methane. At first looking at the images I was disappointed because they look so much like similar images of Earth. I felt as if they could well have been satellite photos of Russia (I do not know if satellite photos of Russia actually look like that). But isn't that amazing anyway? This world, less than half the size of ours, many times more distant from the Sun with a temperature only about 90K, manages to produce features that look like home. [More]

Also, Autism Diva writes about how to spot autistic adults.

Current Music: Run to the Hills - Iron Maiden/Teardrop - Massive Attack

I'm up, I'm up! Finished reading Hard Times the other day too. I can see why Dickens would be criticised for being overly sentimental but it does not bother me, I see it as what one should expect when reading one of his stories (perhaps that will change as I read more). I would say I like it and he seemed a better writer than when he penned Oliver Twist (oh, don't ask me to be more detailed than that, I don't know that I could) but it did not touch my heart so deeply. Not to say I was entirely unmoved, there were simply fewer tears drawn forth. More of an empty, hollow feeling really, which considering the subject matter may have been more appropriate (intended?) after all.

It was amusing to see Gradgrind and Bounderby's insistence on Fact, Fact, Fact! and yet being blind to what the facts of the matter were (and are). That humans have fancies and a need for socialisation is a fact too and people will not be happy if this is denied (see, I think I got the point of the story). James Harthouse I was delighted with from his introduction as just the sort of person to carelessly break the back of the heartless situation set up, rather like someone stepping heedlessly into a glass door (I could not do better than Dickens own comparison to an iceberg). Such fun the schadenfreude of seeing those who raised themselves up high helpless before the idle fancies of one born to it (though I do not normally condone aristocracy [and nor did Dickens to judge by his final scene]). Also loved to pieces the phrase 'deadly-statistical clock'.

Next thing to read is A Christmas Carol, all in the same volume. I am finding it a little slow going, maybe because the plot has been so thoroughly adapted ad nauseum. But, I am determined to see the original through (and it is very short, just the right length for a script, maybe?). ^_^

I am feeling tempted to do for these stories what I used to do on my old MSN Space and rate them for content as if they were films. Could be amusing.

On Sunday, a'course, I rewatched V for Vendetta. That still brings tears to my eyes. Huh, don't seem to have too much to say of it unprompted right now.

And just to finish things off here are some photos of some Saturnian moons, most taken by Cassini:

Janus
Epimetheus
Janus & Epimetheus swapping orbits
Pandora
Telesto, little co-orbital of Tethys
Hyperion (looks like something from the sea floor dried out [sponge, ne?])
So much to learn!

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: dark room
Current Music: Real Wild Child (Wild One) - Iggy Pop

( I should be working but wanted to share these images from Celestia )

I do find Titan and most other small bodies endlessly fascinating, but knowledge has moved on so fast the past few years I feel quite lost to catch up.

Ahwell, bye for now.
^_^

Current Mood: loved
Current Music: nomusic

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aesmael

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