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Cassini-Huygens Reaches Phoebe

Posted by michael on from the bulls-eye dept.

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."

7 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. For those of us who aren't astrophysicists. by Short+Circuit · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Google search, "define: retrograde"

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    tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
    1. Re:For those of us who aren't astrophysicists. by hopemafia · · Score: 5, Funny

      As a Geologist I'm even more confused by your statement 'I did a GIS for "Phoebe"'.
      I use GIS quite a lot and didn't know that geographical information systems had anything to do with space exploration or Lisa Kudrow. To think all this time all I've been doing with my GIS is mapping and spatial analysis.
      I'll have to fire up ArcView and try out these new features you describe...

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      If God had had a computer it would have taken him 7 months to create the earth...if he even bothered to do it at all.
  2. Re:No Different by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny
    Phoebe's mission is no different than many other probes

    If Cassini confirms your theory that Phoebe is a probe, I think that will be a very valuable insight. It will mean there are aliens that were building probes long before us, and they could build probes that are hundreds of miles wide.

  3. Re:No Different by monkeySauce · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How can you possibly determine what is or isn't valuable information before it's even discovered??

    Granted there are never any guarantees, but the Cassini probe is going to be over 1000 times closer than previous probes. You never know what it might discover.

  4. More about Phoebe by JaF893 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here are some links about phoebe and the Cassini-Huygens:
    Phoebe
    Cassini-Huygens

  5. A little more on Retrograde by Pi_0's+don't+shower · · Score: 5, Informative
    For those of you who want a bit of information, check out this link on retrograde motion, which does an excellent job of explaining what retrograde is. For those who are curious but too lazy to click, some of the interesting info is given below:
    # Venus rotates slowly in the retrograde direction.
    # The moons Ananke, Carme, Pasiphaë and Sinope all orbit Jupiter in a retrograde direction, and are thought to be fragments of a single body that Jupiter captured long ago. Many other minor moons of Jupiter orbit retrograde.
    # The moon Phoebe orbits Saturn in a retrograde direction, and is thought to be a captured asteroid.
    # The moon Triton orbits Neptune in a retrograde direction, and is thought to be a captured Kuiper belt object.
    # The planet Uranus has an axial tilt which is very near to 90, and can be considered to be rotating in a retrograde direction depending on one's interpretation.
  6. Re:you set yourself up by lpontiac · · Score: 5, Funny

    It's about as hard to understand as "CONGRESS SHALL MAKE NO LAW" :)