Phoebe Pictures Released

EccentricAnomaly writes "NASA has begun to release some pictures from Cassini's Phoebe flyby last Friday. If you look at the thumbnail of this image or if you look at the right of these images, you can see a group of craters that look like a skull just south of the equator and something that looks like George Washington (wearing his wig) near the north pole. Come up with some good names for features, and you can submit your ideas to the IAU. There's a process for naming a newly discovered crater, fossa, or sulcus. By the way, the naming convention for Phoebe is people associated with Phoebe or the Greek islands."

Comments

More pictures...

[Anonymous Coward]

here

Names associated with Phoebe

[Anonymous Coward]

Joey, Monica, and Chandler

Re:Names associated with Phoebe

[TimeZone]

Smelly Cat

Re:Names associated with Phoebe

[Profane MuthaFucka]

Imagine two ice miners, working the surface of Saturn's moon Phoebe. The year is 2643. They are talking about the crater they are digging in: "Smelly Cat". They talk about all the possible permutations, the fact that cats can't live on the surface of Phoebe, the fact that if they could they wouldn't be detectable by smell, what sort of cat would live on Phoebe, exactly why the poor beast smells in the first place. Could the smelly cat not be an attribute of the cat, but instead be what the cat does? A cat that smells all day? They even wonder what a smelly cat is in French, and decide that it's probably a 'chat royale avec fromage'.

But these poor souls have no idea that just over 500 years before them there was a completely inconsequential but highly amusing television show, where a song called "Smelly Cat" played a minor character definition role. The point of this story is that we MUST have a crater named smelly cat, just to fuck with people's minds.

Oh no, not more features that look like faces!

[sdo1]

Queue the wackos....

-S

Fakes!

[Anonymous Coward]

In http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/media/ir/2004/197_2 07_1.jpg that photo, I think I see a wire. I declare these are fakes! Tin foil hats set to maximum strength! Full conspiracy ahead!

Yeah, looks like

[Anti Frozt]

• "...something that looks like George Washington."

You brainwashed fools. That actually is George Washington. He's been hiding on Phoebe all this time, waiting for the state of affairs in the United States to hit rock-bottom before making his triumphant return and lifting American society to its pinnacle.

Judging from the clarity of the picture, it looks like he's making his final launch checks ;)

Phoebe Naming Conventions

[Snarf]

Why not name the features after other characters played by Lisa Kudrow?

Re:Phoebe's Cat

[maxbang]

I would have liked it more if they fired the guys and stuck with the "frolicking in the fountain" theme. Throw in some nice bubbly soap and you've got a ratings riot, my friend.

Springfield

[junklight]

There ought to be a rule that *somewhere* on every planet,moon, star etc. is called springfield.

Real Conversation with my wife

[Dark Paladin]

Me: Hm - looks like they're about to take pictures of Phoebe. Should be pretty cool.

My Lovely Wife: Well, out of all the cast of "Friends" I thought she had the best career options.

Me: ...

(Really, she's only like this on astronomy.)

Screw this.

[torpor]

I'm sick of looking at black and white pictures of far-off places where the use of nuclear fusion not only makes sense but is also the only way to bring life to desolate locales.

I wanna go there. Where is my Eagle lander damnit?!! Where is my General Enterprises Hull? Where is my Millenium Falcon? Where is my Beaver-1?

Screw all this mechano-assembly 'space sciences', screw all this "lets invade Iraq so we can feed our fat society even more plastic landfill", screw all this "nuclear fusion will kill the Earth", I want my space-hardened nuke-powerplant packin' HumVee, and I want it NOW!!

Seriously. I'd move to Phoebe TODAY. But the closest I can get is a shitty winnebago on some beach in the Netherlands, or some crap like that. What's the frickin' holdup people?

Sheesh. New World Order my ass. Those guys have no clue what they're doing ... Vote Me For King, and I'll make it -compulsary- for all schoolkids to learn fusion plant physics on Phoebe ...

Re:Screw this.

[SEWilco]

Every Hummer will soon have a nuclear plant to power the electric armor. Yes, I mean the civilian version, to protect against shopping cart attacks and door dingers trying to use the half parking space left on each side of one.

Phoebe

[Anonymous Coward]

is the goddess of Wise Counsel, Thoughtful Replies and Snappy Answers, so she's one of those rare people who can FP on Slashdot and not get instantly modded down.

She can also honestly state "I am the offspring of Uranus" which is guaranteed to get a titter among those Titans who are into Beavis and Butt-Head.

Atlantis!

[pjt33]

Looks more like concentric circles to me. Maybe we've found the true location of Atlantis.

That's no moon

[DCowern]

I've got a bad feeling about this.

Re:That's no moon

[AndroidCat]

It's an outpost:

First images from the Cassini flyby of Phoebe reveal it to be a scarred, cratered outpost with a very old surface and a mysterious past,

A scarred outpost with a mysterious past! That ought to be good for a few more books and talkshows by the face kooks.

Re:That's no moon

[SEWilco]

...at least the dot is off-center so it's not aimed directly at us.

Care Bear Stare...

[wileynet]

How long do you have to stare at these things before you see something? I keep expecting a zombie/ghost face to sudden appear and make me wet my pants. ...again.

Gotta name something the island of Lesbos

[colinmc151]

One of the Greek islands is the island of Lesbos (where the poet Sappho first wrote about love between women, and yes this is where the term lesbian comes from). This would be seriously cool on several counts:

• Phobe being a female figure in Greek mythology this fits better than a lot of male oriented names.
• It would annoy the U.S. right wing seriously, which at this point is a very good thing.
• Because of the previous point, this may make it easier to get cash for space exploration, as in:
• • To the left talk about how more money would allow more heroes of the left be honored.
  • For the right talk about such features have to obliterated

In other words everyone who loves space exploration wins :-) .

Re:Gotta name something the island of Lesbos

[cruachan]

Aye, that'd be the in the Delta of Venus?

From the voice of Pheobe...

[aardwolf204]

Smelly Cat, Smelly cat what are they feeding you?
Smelly Cat, smelly cat it's not your fault...

They won't take you to the vet.
You're obviously not their favorite pet.
You may not be a bed of roses,
And you're no friend to those with noses.

Smelly cat, smelly cat what are they feeding you?
Smelly cat, smelly cat it's not your fault!

Had to say it.