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Two New Saturnian Moons
Mixel writes "NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting saturn since the 30th of June has uncovered two previously unknown bodies. 'The moons are approximately 3 kilometers (2 miles) and 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) across -- smaller than the city of Boulder, Colorado.' The Huygens probe will be deployed to the large (bigger than Mercury!) yet mysterious moon, Titan, in December."
Thats no moon...
sorry, sorry... I'll get my quote, I mean coat.
Cool, a moon you can actually run all the way around in 20 minutes.
Saturn actually has millions of moons if you count the boulders in the rings. If you don't count them, then where is the cut-off point? This debate has never been settled, and may require an arbitrary cut-off size to get a clean definition.
Table-ized A.I.
Why must everything be compared to Boulder, Colorado?
Where do we draw the line between classifying a stellar body as a moon or an asteroid? Do we simply base it on the fact that it's a piece of rock orbiting a planet or is there some other defining characteristic?
Ceres, the largest asteroid in our solar system, has a diameter ~950 Km in length, much larger than many of the so-called moons we've discovered.
In C++, friends can touch each others private parts.
nyuk nyuk
...but bigger than Little Rock?
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
If we throw a trashbag out of the the ISS does that become a moon? What about a bolt that is dropped when repairing a sattelite?
There must be some definition of a moon that includes some reasonable minimums -- like gravity or magnetic field.
Fight Spammers!
I'd say it's a moon when it's big enough to exert enough gravity to walk on, without worrying about being flung out into space.
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
It seems like one (S/2004 S1) of the little worldlets may have been re-discovered since it may have been spotted when one of the Voyager probes passed Jupiter by in 1981, then christened S/1981 S14.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
A satellite is any object that orbits a planet, regardless of mass.
A moon is any natural object that orbits a planet, again regardless of mass. (so probes and debris don't qualify)
A planet is an object massive enough to become spherical under its own gravitationnal field, that orbits a star. An asteroid is any rocky object that orbits a star and doesn't qualify as a planet.
A moon doesn't have to be spherical, so that's why the two irregular moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos (captured asteroids), are still called moons. The rings of saturn are made up of millions of small "moons", but they are (rightfully so) considered a single entity.
1) I have to muse, when did Boulder CO become a unit of astronomical significance (and for the trolls: how many library of congress is that?)
2) Everybody keeps asking, but the reason these are significant is because
a) they orbit saturn (most asteroids orbit the sun)
b) they differ from the asteroids in the asteroid belt because, well, they are not in the asteroid belt
c) their orbit are actually located between two other moons, which is surprising because such area is under heavy bombarbment from other sun-orbiting asteroids and they should have been destroyed long time ago - this sheds light on our understanding of the kuniper belt, asteroids, saturnic satellite formation, etc etc.
That said, I couldn't make out the things on the picture, so i dunno... could be CCD noise? that would badly suck...
Extra! Extra! Scientists find two tiny rocks millions of miles away! Many surprised they haven't been seen before now!
An artists sketch of the new moons as seen from Earth through a high-powered telescope is shown here
:
This sig is part of your complete breakfast.
Even though they're orbiting Saturn, they're closer to Earth than Boulder, Colorado is.
And by the way, we don't call them "moons" here in Boulder. We refer to them as "planetary companions."
FYI: Boulder is where Mork and Mindy was set.
They are provisionally named S/2004 S1 and S/2004 S2.
Why? Just call them Boulder and Little Rock. But then again, maybe not. Some lawyer might sue. Do cities trademark their names?
What if the gravity is strong enough for a suicidally depressed person to walk on, but weak enough that a happy person with a little "bounce" in their walk goes flying off into orbit?
Of course the thought of that would be enough to make any astronaut upset.... so... wait... I guess that won't be a problem.
--Rob
I know Io, Jupiters moon, gets tugged until molten. So, what are the rings/dust/moonies made of? If they are the same materials as Io, what keeps Io from becoming a ring?
I don't think gravity tugs would do it alone. An impact with a comet into a good sized moon, now pulverized, would do it. So, the rings would be a mix of the comet/moon, probably very different. It would be neat to get more info. If ring could be sampled, bringing back two types of chunks, would argue strongly for impact. It would be a cheap way of sampling a comet?
Also, the density of the rings would make ideal for mining? I know asteroid belt is out there, but would it be worth processing one rock instead of attacting alot of iron fragments with a magnet, with the plus of having a methane atmosphere for fuel a short trip away. Atmosphere skip/collect methane+oxides=rocket fuel. Maybe. Trying to think on a planetary scale here.
This mind intentionally left blank.
The KKK a bunch of sheetheads? You decide!
The last time Saturn was visited, it had these "spokes" visible in the rings. Now, they're nowhere to be seen.
2 004_Interplanetary_Part_2/InterplanetaryDayAfter-P art2.htm
This report: http://www.enterprisemission.com/_articles/05-27-
Lists a large number of rather extraordinary changes that EVERY PLANET in the solar system has gone through in the last couple decades.
Personally I find it rather alarming. Massive oxygen appearing on Venus? Io hotter than Mercury? Radical new weather patterns on Neptune, and even Pluto? The gas giants radiating vastly more energy than they receive from the Sun?
Is this guy onto something big, or is he delusional?
"Mind, as manifested by the capacity to make choices, is to some extent present in every electron." -Freeman Dyson
Now what we need to do, just to make sure the estimate is correct, is to place one of these moons directly onto Boulder, CO to see if it will in fact cover the entire city.
Now I know NCAR is there, which is cool and all, but NCAR is on the mountain, and should be O.K.
I mean, I just want to make sure they are correct about the size estimate. Not that I want to wipe Boulder off the face of the earth or anything like that. Why would anyone want to do that?
Who's with me? Who is with me? In the name of Science!
I think the citizens of Boulder will still fit if they squeeze together a bit.
MAKE YOUR TIME
There's a very interesting article at space.com entitled 'What is a Moon?'.
Well... a small planet is called a planetoid (eg. Sedna) so -
(Now follow closely on this. It's a work of genius but quite confusing for the layperson)
Let's call these...
Moonoids!
(And the Great Anonymous Coward has achieved immortality for all time for this wonderful, about-to-be-adopted-really-soon-now NASA term!)
Slight problem with your definition: Sedna is not a planet. A small planet is just that; a planet. A planetoid would be an object that wasn't good enough to be called a planet, but came close, such as Ceres. Sure, it's round, but it doesn't possess the majority of the mass in a similar orbit, so not a planet.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
how many library of congress is that?
12. Definitely 12.
I'm having trouble picturing this. How many football fields would you say that is?
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Even the most beautiful moon still doesn't compare to the wonders of Uranus.
G-Force music visualization
we now have a third metric to add to the existing system of measuring everything in pop news stories in "volkswagens" and "rhodeislands" (1), we can now hit that middle mark, "boulders", though it's not so middle...
the conversions for the VBR go something like this (2):
beetle ('classic' at 160" x 60" = 9,600 sq in = 66.67 sq ft footprint
boulder = 25 sq mi = 696,960,000 sq ft
rhode island = 1,214 sq mi = 33,844,377,600 sq ft
which means
10,453,877 beetles in a boulder
48.56 boulders in a rhodeisland
507,640,282 beetles in a rhodeisland
which would make a hellova traffic jam (3)
(1) also haven't read the journals of irrepreoducible results / AIR for a while so this could all seem cribbed - sorry if so
(2) (check my math, it's early still)
(3) virtually no change to downtown newport in the summer however
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
If any unmodified* human, can achieve escape veolocity under it's own power**, then it's not a moon.
;)
African or European?
Now feel free to mod me down
Pavlov. Does this name ring a bell?