Slashdot Mirror
Four New Moons For Saturn
shyam writes: "An international team of eight "satellite hunters," astronomers who pluck tiny specks of light out of the distant solar system, has discovered four new outer moons of Saturn orbiting at least 15 million kilometers (more than 9 million miles) from the surface of the giant planet. The discovery gives Saturn a total of 22 known moons, surpassing the 21 orbiting Uranus. Nothing is known about the four new moons except for their brightness. Estimates of their size -- between 10 and 50 kilometers (6-30 miles) across -- are based on assumptions of their reflectivity. Observed from Earth-bound observatories, the moons appear as faint dots of light moving around the planet.
(
[Full] article)."
That was actually pretty funny and elaborate for a troll.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
On the other hand, this points to the continuing problem in astronomy that the more things we discover, the harder it becomes to clearly classify them. It's the dimpled chad of the solar system. We aren't quite sure if Pluto is a Kuyper object or a planet. It probably isn't going to be clear whether these objects are true "moons" or simply temporarily captured astroids. I'm sure we'll see more exact measurements and simulations that will attempt to determine if their orbits are stable.
Fly to Saturn's moons,
and let me write my name in chalk;
Let me see what Spring is like on
A 3 mile-wide rock.
In other words, hold my hand,
In other words, darling -- kiss me.
(you're not a musician, are you?)
--
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
--
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
"Son, when i was younger, i had an open-source project that i needed to advertise in my sig, and so i did some things i'm not too proud of..."
"Oh God, Dad! You were a karma whore?!!"
--
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
I thought that would be a little unfair. It's not that there is anything specifically wrong with your post, it is just that 'Priceless' is no longer funny
Or I could be wrong on this...what do others think? Is 'Priceless' still funny?
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
Yep.
And no, they may not remain "moons" forever, in which case they would be reclassified. This usage has been pretty consistent since I started reading about such things, oh, in the mid-1970's.
It is by no means clear that any of the outer planet moons were formed in their current orbits. In fact, considering some of the recent work being done on the Rare Earth hypothesis, it seems likely that any small solid body near a gas giant probably came there from somewhere else.
It is also considered as near to certain as any of these things ever get that Mars' moons Phobos and Deimos are captured asteroids; yet they are definitely considered moons of Mars.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Why couldn't moons form out of the protoplanetary discs, like the rings most likely did?
The discovery gives Saturn a total of 22 known moons, surpassing the 21 orbiting Uranus
Saturn busts! House wins!
Categorizing them by characteristics $80,000
... priceless
Realizing that an underfunded NASA won't send anything out that way before 2010
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
It's a space station.
--
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
With the ones mentionned here and the one mentionned earlier (http://slashdot.org/articles/00/07/21/2158211.sht ml), that makes 5 new moons for Saturn discovered in 2000...
Now, I want to see what they're made of (and if they have any atmosphere; it seems unlikely because of their sizes).
Mario.
Of course I'm not sure what a paintball does on impact at -350 degrees farenheit.
tcd004 Janet RenoMargolis, the least downloaded woman on the planet
It would seem with a size of 10km that some of these "moons" could easily be debunked size-wise by some of the smaller asteroids.
What does an asteroid need to do to be officially declared a "moon"? Maintain an eliptical or circular orbit around a planet? (And how do we know whether these moons near Saturn will stay in place in 20 years? Or if some asteroids with really large orbits won't eventually be declared "moons" of some planet?)
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
I seem to recall that the last batch of moons (around Netptune???), were named after women in Shakesperian plays, since they've pretty much ran through all of the major and minor players in Greek mythology.
OK... Shakespear is cool, but when then? I don't think we really want moons named Marge, Lisa, Maggie, and, um, Miss Krabappel do we?
Hmmm.. then again...
DrLunch.com The site that tells you what's for lunch!
While it's possible that they're older than Saturn's other satellites, I doubt they're that much older. Most of Saturn's other satellites probably did form from the accretion disk, while the outer satellites in irregular orbits (these four plus Phoebe) were captured (a rather gentler process than "yanked") later. However, they're far enough out that their orbits probably aren't stable over the lifetime of the Solar System: perturbations from the other outer planets (Jupiter, most importantly) can "de-orbit" them in much the same way they were originally captured. This has apparently been observed with a moon of Jupiter's, BTW.
This may be somewhat less true for satellites captured into retrograde orbits, since those orbits tend to become smaller with time, as the moons exchange angular momentum with the primary body through tides; moons orbiting in the "normal" direction, of course, tend to slowly spiral outward -- and if these new moons are in normal ("prograde") orbits, it increases the chance that they'll be lost. Phoebe is indeed in a retrograde orbit, opposite the planetary rotation, and capture into a retrograde orbit is apparently much easier than capture into a prograde orbit. The new moons don't have orbital parameters determined yet, as far as I can tell; my money says they're retrograde (most of 'em, anyway). As far out as they are, tidal influences are pretty weak, anyway.
So they may be old, but Saturn itself (plus its regular moons) is pretty old: current thinking is that the outer ("gas giant") planets may have condensed from the protosolar nebula in the first 10 million years or so, while the inner ("terrestrial") planets may have taken ten times that long. I suspect that these new satellites were captured much more recently, on the general timescale of the Solar System.
---
---
Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton
The closest Saturn's mean orbit ever gets to our mean orbit is ~790 million miles. Without hopping onboard Cassini you're not going to get very close to them very soon.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
HAL: That is not a moon, Dave.
Dave: What is it then, HAL?
HAL: It is a small meteor that has estabilshed an orbit around Saturn.
Dave: But how can astronomers see it from Earth, HAL?
HAL: The surface has been covered with AOL CDs, Dave.
Dave: Incredible! How did they get here, HAL?
HAL: Once AOL merged with Time Warner, the federal government sued AOLTW for monopolizing the space available in landfills and issued a federal order to clean the landfills. With AOL's knowledge of computer systems and TW's knowledge of satellite systems, they launched several satellites filled with AOL CDs. The payloads merged between the Earth and the Moon. Then used the "Slingshot Effect" to hurl itself into deep space.
Dave: Similar to how we arrived here.
HAL: Correct, Dave. But the CDs came too close to Saturn and were placed in an orbit around Saturn.
Dave: Ok HAL, thanks.
HAL: You're welcome, Dave
"The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
"We can't all, and some of us don't." -- Eeyore
I'd go to that goat whatever website that people keep trolling with.
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
Unfortunately, these moons seem relatively unimpressive.
It does give a whole new spin on the whole "When the Moon / hits your eye / Like a big pizza pie" when the moon in question isn't that much larger than some pizza pies, though.
-----------------
------------
Saturn decided to say that Uranus was just a sore loser and asked him to concede from the race for the planet with the most moons.
Microsoft is not the answer. Linux is the answer. Microsoft is the question.
Uranus immediately called for a hand recount.
--
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
has discovered four new outer moons of Saturn
Wow, four new outer moons? They were formed, what, yesterday? Wouldn't "previously unknown" be a better designation than "new"?
--
From what I've read, these moons are much older than Saturn's other satellites. Instead of forming from the planet's accretion disk they were yanked into orbit after Saturn was pretty well formed. Pretty interesting- they could be leftovers from the solar system's origins.
---