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Cassini-Huygens Reaches Phoebe
Anonymous Explorer writes "The Cassini-Huygens
probe is set to fly by the largest outer Saturn moon of Phoebe today. Cassini will be roughly 2000 km from the surface of Phoebe at 1:56 Pacific time Friday, June 11. Thats
pretty darn close. The newest
images of Phoebe are already thousands of times better than the previous ones taken by the Voyager
2 mission in 1981. Phoebe is interesting in that it maintains a retrograde orbit around Saturn. This has lead to the hypothesis that it is an ancient asteroid that has been captured by the gravitational pull from Saturn. Phoebe may provide some important insights into the composition of early building blocks of our planets. Phoebe was discovered in 1898 by American astronomer William
Pickering. As always, discussion about this mission can be found at
#cassini on irc.freenode.net."
... on a very special "Friends".
Sheesh... What's the deal with people giving all these links? If you're going to do that, put something in there to distinguish it from the other nonesense links or something...
Phoebe's mission is no different than many other probes that were promised to give valuable insight into the building of the univerese. Many other probes have promised the same thing but we have not yet seem the information. Although, I must admit it the information it will collect will probably be extremley interesting, however it will not give valuable insight.
for an idea of what to expext, here are some preliminary images of Phoebe.
Google search, "define: retrograde"
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
The series has been cancelled, she's getting married and now she has to deal with probes! Hopefully Joey can help her out!
I thought friends finale was a few weeks ago?
Mirrored just in time
Hmmm, that deep crater looks like a good place to park the Millenium Falcon while we wait for that Star Destroyer to leave.
"No matter where you go, there you are." -- Buckaroo Banzai
Here is some pictures of the probe
Pretty interesting to look at...!
Wonder how long it takes for this one to get to saturn.?
This is just amazing. We're really reaching further and further out in the solar system. And not just by blindly sending probes out there, but by consciously seeking to get close to other bodies in the solar system, and really finding out. I really hope I get to see the Europa landings in my lifetime.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
On the contrary, the phoebe probe will give us extremely valuable insight into the creation of our Solar System. In fact, it already has in that it is cratered (albeit, not seen as a major discovery to most people). Scientists have wondered for years how it managed to only reflect 6% of the light hitting it. In addition, since this may be a Kuiper object, it would be the only (relatively) stationary one within reasonable range from Earth to study.
Here are some links about phoebe and the Cassini-Huygens:
Phoebe
Cassini-Huygens
Phoebe may provide some important insites into the composition
This should hopefully speak for itself...
Obi-Wan: That's no moon. It's a space station.
don't you humans get the message? what part of "ATTEMPT NO LANDINGS THERE" is hard to understand?
So Phoebe has a moon?
Then decides she is too much of a dizzy blonde and that Rachel might be more interesting.
Do not try to read the dupe, thats impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth
What truth?
There is no dupe
That moon looks like one of my recent attempts at Photoshop :S
:)
mmm gradient shading
Having scoured the web sites --- it's actually quite hard to find the information --- the probe is doing the close flyby at 2056 UTC (i.e. about two and a half hours from now). Assuming I've got the daylight saving compensation right, of course...
Astronomers have spotted Chandler Bing on a direct course for Uranus :D
...zzttt crackle crackle ...
....
Smelly cat, smelly cat
What are they feeding you?
Smelly cat, smelly cat
It's not your fault
Nothing is going to be found on any of these "bodies" that we don't already expect (ie rocks, dust, and craters).
You should be concerned with spending this money on stuff that is important. Healthcare, the poor, roads, underwater research, cancer, STDs, Iraq, Afghanistan, longevity, drugs (prescription or otherwise), etc.
Mod me down Slashbotters but remember that there are plenty of more important things than sending probes to see dust particles and rocks.
Saturn has billions of "moons" if something that small (137 miles?!?) is considered one. The composition of the rings alone makes up a ton. So why is this one more interesting than others?
Do really dense people warp space more than others?
you get to use local time! :P
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
And your damnable metric time!
Roving Web-Teleoperated Robot
Apparently, I can't spell.
Anyone have info on when the pics will make the transit and be broadcast? The Cassini site at JPL seems to be acting weird ATM. Looks like NASA can send a probe to Saturn but can't build a website to resist the /. effect.
nos laetus epulor qui would domito nos
Why can't we see Saturn behind Phoebe if the probe is going toward both?
When are we gonna privatize space so commericial entities can quickly outpace NASA?
the probe is doing the close flyby at 2056 UTC (i.e. about two and a half hours from now
Sorry to confuse the issue even more, but since the probe is 80 light minutes from the earth, does that mean that 2056 UTC is when it's actually happening, or is that when we finally find out that it happened 80 minutes in the past?
BTM
That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
That's no Moon... It's a space station!?
About all that nasty radioactive power it had on board. Going to contaminate the entire cosmos!
Insites = Insights
I'm really excited about the new photos... I hope they release full res mosaics and don't delay... pre-processed surface texture and heightmap data would be nice, too.
:)
If you want to get an idea of just how high res pictures they're going to get, do the following:
1) Download the program "Celestia". Build and run it.
2) While it is building, pull up the last picture that Cassini took of Phoebe.
3) When Celestia comes up, full screen it.
4) Go into the configuration and tell it to include full details. Exit the configuration menu.
5) Press enter, and type in "Phoebe". Press enter.
6) Press 'g' to go to Phoebe (note: Phoebe is currently false-texture in Celestia, since we don't know much about it)
7) Middle click and hold down, and drag the mouse until you're at a distance of 658,000 kilometers.
8) Press ctrl-'+' to zoom, until the resolution of Phoebe that you're seing on the screen is about the same as that in the NASA picture (note: resolution, not size. The nasa picture is enlarged).
9) Without changing the zoom, hold middle click againa nd drag the mouse until the distance is 2,000 kilometers.
10) Hold down shift, and use the arrow keys to look around. That's the sort of resolution images that they should be able to get.
Impressive, isn't it? I can't wait!
Carbon, made, only wants to be unmade.
The newest images of Phoebe are already thousands of times better than the previous ones taken by the Voyager 2 mission in 1981.
No, but it is hoped they will be. At best, the newest released images are 10x better than Voyager. Expect the high res images later today. You are getting ahead of yourself.
an ill wind that blows no good
The ocean is the biggest one.
;)
Space is the biggest mystery of the galaxy/universe
Phoebe is actually believed to be a captured Kuiper Belt object (KBO). This means its composition might be very icy/organic, making it more like a non-active comet than an asteroid.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Was it originally observed by the Greeks?
The slashdot write up ALREADY says:
"Phoebe is interesting in that it maintains a retrograde orbit around Saturn."
Someone asks "why is Phoebe is interesting", gets modded up.
Someone answers "it has a retrograde orbits", gets modded up.
Jesus.
Weren't you in class the day they told you not to start every sentence with the same word? :-)
At least you didn't start each sentence with "I"...
Heh heh... Just giving you a hard time.just found out the ESA built that portion. needless to say it is going to fail :-(
UTC comes up when setting time zones of most (if not all) linux distributions. So most have heard of it
Of course, if you're like me, you ignored it and had your computer watch running 9 hours ahead of your system clock...
But yeah, PST = Pacific Standard Time. So try looking for a city on the pacific (YellowKnive, Vancouer, Seattle, Portland, LA, San Fran, and Tijunana are all common choices i think). Also, the one refers to 01 as there is no pm or am used you can assume its 24 hour time
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
You'd think a geophysicist would be familiar with google.
...this probe was never meant for anal insertion
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
Its lovely how there are cries of privatizing space and how we'd get to the stars faster if we only let regular joe mega corporations build spaceships. There plans go something like the familar pattern we've seen all over the place in /.
1. Privatize Space Exploration
2. ????
3. Profit!!
Right now there is little to no incentive for a company like Lockhead-Martin to build system to land people on the moon and build a moonbase. Science is a terrible profit motive unless you can find practicle applications. And since we know the moon isn't made of cheese (which you can sell) or littered with diamons the size of footballs no company has this burning desire to go into space. Its too costly to make money at it.
So we are stuck with government ventures. I'm glad the US, Russia, and China push these things but I have no illusions about how this works. They are doing it because their is a small bet of prestigue and a good way to spend military for R&D without making it so obvious.
So until you find out that Pheobe is made of 99% gold or Mars has rubies the size of boulders or something else interesting there is little point ot privatizing space over having world governments fund it. Simply put, governments don't care about profits.
I welcome our new Saturnian overlords.
In Soviet Russia, Phoebe observes you.
check the facts yourself!
There is no DSN tracking pass today, so the high res images won't even be in JPL's hot little hands until tomorrow afternoon.
--Rob
bletch - that solarviews.com link brought up one of the most annoying pages I've ever seen with the giant flashing red arrows. Who can read the info with all that crap going on, jeebus.
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Has anyone calculated the orbit of Uranus in regards to slowing? I mean: if you take a bicycle wheel spinning, it will easily rotate about a lateral axis as in rolling about axis as in the earth; but if you try twisting the wheel, as in the orbit in Uranus, the wheel slows much more rapidly. It seems that the planet would exert a slowing orbit or slowing rotation. Any physicists tackle this calculation?
2056 UTC is when it's actually happening. We'll have to wait another 80 minutes till Cassini's radio signals sent during the flyby reach earth. Nothing here to see until at least 2220 UTC.
How cheap is it going to beat to fly into space? *shrug* Its like saying make a $10M contest to build a boat for $100 that can cruise can cross the Pacific. It can be done but I don't see such a contest harelding a new age of travel or cargo carrying. It takes more than coming up with a cheap boat that wins a science fair.
Everyone forgets step #2. People are going after the X-Prize because the prize itself is profit. The moment that disappears what then? How many people will pay for a 3 seat vehilce that will do nothing much but put them in orbit? What will they do up there? They certainly aren't going to make it to the moon let alone Saturn to check out what is there in this thing. If it costs $10,000 per person per ride how many are going to line up for this?!?!
I don't doubt that someday technology will catch up and make space travel cheap, comfy, and affordable. It isn't today and unless someone gets lucky doing materials research it isn't going to be any time in the near future. Contests like the X-Prize are interesting but it isn't going to change L-M, Boeing, etc. buisness plans.
That was funny... but I fear not all Slashdotters get the subtle ironic funmaking of rabid 'libertarians'.
20:56 UTC is Earth Recieve Time.. It actually happened at 19:34 UTC Spaceraft event time... we really at 19:35 ephemeris time.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
PST is centred on Redmond, Washington. That is why all computers are set by default to the One Time Zone. Have you not seen a fresh computer before :-)
One of the greatest things about the Mars rovers page, is that you don't have to wait until NASA releases "press release" images in order to see the latest. You can access them through the mars rovers RAW images site probably a few hours after NASA got them.
I havn't seen any links to such a database for Casinni, but I really hope they set one up soon!
UUDDLRLRBA - Wouldn't want to thwart anyone trying to beat Life Force or Contra would we?
This is my post. See sig above ^
and it was quite successful here.
UTC is damn awful time system because of leap seconds which cannot be predicted. All calculations must use ET....
For the purpose at hand (communicating to humans who live around the world about time to within a minute or two) UTC is just the thing.
Leap seconds are necessary for many purposes because the earth spins at an unpredictable rate, and people (and navigators) like to keep in sync with sunrise, star transits, etc.
You might want to check your own reference about "ET":
It is common to see outdated references to ET when TT is intended, even in currently operating flight projects.
When leap seconds are inconvenient, TT/ET is indeed a reasonable choice. It is an old time scale, but very useful because it remains pretty consistent in usage over longer time periods. But what you probably want is an official time standard (one that is widely available via radio signals, NTP, etc) without leap seconds. TAI is the right starting point there. It is pretty much a constant offset from TT, but more official outside astronomical circles, and thus more likely to be made available conveniently like UTC is.
Ignore the loonies who are trying to do away with leap seconds in UTC - that is just silly. Use TAI if you don't like leap seconds.
--Neal
Go IETF!
According to a JPL timeline, it's closest approach to Phoebe will be at 2004-06-11t20:56z, and the playback of data starts at 2004-06-12t13:28z.
Bill Pickering wasn't an American you putz! He was a New Zealander!
What's next, the Aussies claiming Russell Crowe and Mel Gibson as their own? Oh, wait... Never mind. You can have both of them. Leave Ed Hillary out of this though.
By 'Ground Time' they mean Earth Receive Time, or when the even happens at Saturn adjusted by a one-way light time from Saturn, or about an hour and a half.... Saturn is durn far away.
The flyby happened around 19:34 UTC Saturn-Time.
There are 10 types of people in this world, those who can count in binary and those who can't.
We'll never escape natural distasters, and we certainly can't run from ourselves, but we can get away from the religion.
Not likely. Every religion on earth (that I can think of, anyway) dictates that deities and/or heavenly realms exist in the upward direction.
This sounds(?) about right, from what little I know of Dutch pronounciation.
This being the 21st Century already and all, one would think that we'd be to the point where somebody who knows how to pronounce Cassini-Heygens would be able to easily upload a sound clip somehow into a posting so that everybody else could just listen to it. Alas, not quite yet, it seems, but perhaps some of us will live to see it.
"Anybody can change the world, but most people probably shouldn't." -- Marge Simpson
Comet Wild 2 picture looks much alike Phoebe
Is it just me or is there some scientific significance (Phoebe is a captured comet etc.)