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Four of Saturn's moons parade by their parent
March 18, 2009On 24 February 2009, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captured a photo sequence of four moons of Saturn passing in front of their parent planet. The moons, from far left to right, are the white icy moons Enceladus and Dione, the large orange moon Titan, and icy Mimas. Due to the angle of the Sun, they are each preceded by their own shadow.
These rare moon transits only happen when the tilt of Saturn's ring plane is nearly "edge on" as seen from the Earth. Saturn's rings will be perfectly edge on to our line of sight on 10 August and 4 September 2009. Unfortunately, Saturn will be too close to the Sun to be seen by viewers on Earth at that time. This "ring plane crossing" occurs every 14-15 years. In 1995-96 Hubble witnessed the previous ring plane crossing, as well as many moon transits, and helped to discover several new moons of Saturn.
Early 2009 was a favourable time for viewers with small telescopes to watch moon and shadow transits crossing the face of Saturn. Titan, Saturn's largest moon, crossed Saturn on four separate occasions: 24 January, 9 February, 24 February and 12 March, although not all events were visible from all locations on Earth.
Italian Galileo Galilei - often referred to as the father of astronomy - was the first to observe Saturn through a telescope in 1610. Dutch mathematician and astronomer Christian Huygens discovered Titan in 1655 and, 350 years later, the ESA probe named for him touched down on Titan (on 14 January 2005), giving the world its first views of the surface of the mysterious, icy world. Giovanni Domenico Cassini, a French/Italian astronomer, discovered Dione (in addition to others) and the German-born Englishman, William Herschel, discovered Mimas and Enceladus.
These pictures were taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on 24 February 2009, when Saturn was at a distance of roughly 1.25 billion kilometres from Earth. Hubble can see details as small as 300 kilometres across on Saturn. The dark band running across the face of the planet slightly above the rings is the shadow of the rings cast on the planet.
Hubble Information Centre
Italian Galileo Galilei - often referred to as the father of astronomy - was the first to observe Saturn through a telescope in 1610. Dutch mathematician and astronomer Christian Huygens discovered Titan in 1655 and, 350 years later, the ESA probe named for him touched down on Titan (on 14 January 2005), giving the world its first views of the surface of the mysterious, icy world. Giovanni Domenico Cassini, a French/Italian astronomer, discovered Dione (in addition to others) and the German-born Englishman, William Herschel, discovered Mimas and Enceladus.
These pictures were taken with Hubble's Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 on 24 February 2009, when Saturn was at a distance of roughly 1.25 billion kilometres from Earth. Hubble can see details as small as 300 kilometres across on Saturn. The dark band running across the face of the planet slightly above the rings is the shadow of the rings cast on the planet.
Hubble Information Centre
Saturn Current Events and Saturn News RSSA Long Night Falls Over Saturn's Rings
As Saturn's rings orbit the planet, a section is typically in the planet's shadow, experiencing a brief night lasting from 6 to 14 hours. However, once approximately every 15 years, night falls over the entire visible ring system for about four days.
Cassini Helps Redraw Shape of Solar System
In a paper published Oct. 15 in Science, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) present a new view of the region of the sun's influence, or heliosphere, and the forces that shape it. Images from one of the Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument's sensors, the Ion and Neutral Camera (MIMI/INCA), on NASA's Cassini spacecraft suggest that the heliosphere may not have the comet-like shape predicted by existing models.
For future superconductors, a little bit of lithium may do hydrogen a lot of good
Scientists have a long and unsuccessful history of attempting to convert hydrogen to a metal by squeezing it under incredibly high and steady pressures.
NAE announces award winners John Casani and Sheila Widnall
During its 2009 annual meeting, the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) will present two awards for extraordinary impacts on the engineering profession.
CU-Boulder space scientists set for final spacecraft flyby of Mercury
NASA's MESSENGER spacecraft, which is toting an $8.7 million University of Colorado at Boulder instrument, will make its third and final flyby of Mercury on Sept. 29 -- a clever gravity-assist maneuver that will steer it into orbit around the rocky planet beginning in March 2011.
Storm clouds over Titan
Taking advantage of advanced techniques to correct distortions caused by Earth's atmosphere, astronomers used the NSF-supported Gemini Observatory to capture the first images of clouds over the tropics of Titan, Saturn's largest moon.
Primitive asteroids in the main asteroid belt may have formed far from the sun
Many of the objects found today in the asteroid belt located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter may have formed in the outermost reaches of the solar system.
Galileo's notebooks may reveal secrets of new planet
Galileo knew he had discovered a new planet in 1613, 234 years before its official discovery date, according to a new theory by a University of Melbourne physicist.
New cleaning protocol for future 'search for life' missions
Scientists have developed a new cleaning protocol for space hardware, such as the scoops of Mars rovers, which could be used on future "Search for Life" missions on other planets.
Titan may have subsurface ocean of hydrocarbons, says Stanford researcher
Saturn's largest moon, Titan, may have a subterranean ocean of hydrocarbons and some topsy-turvy topography in which the summits of its mountains lie lower than its average surface elevation, according to new research.
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Saturn: A New View by Laura Lovett (Author), Joan Horvath (Author), Jeff Cuzzi (Author), Kim Stanley Robinson (Foreword) After a journey of seven years and 2.2 billion miles, the spacecraft Cassini, with a probe named Huygens aboard, reached Saturn in July 2004, beginning a four-year tour to observe the remote planet, its rings, and its moons in depth. As a result of the spectacularly succesful Cassini-Huygens mission, photographs of astounding beauty have come streaming back to Earth, together with enough data to keep hundreds of scientists engrossed for decades. Reproduced here, in unprecedented detail and exquisite, high-quality format, are 150 of the best of those images, among them rings from the unlit side never visible from Earth and panoramas of the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. This breathtaking volume, including authoritative essays on the planetary system and the mission,... |
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