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Cassini Confirms New Moon of Saturn
pipcorona writes ""In a spectacular kick-off to its first season of prime ring viewing, which began last month, the Cassini spacecraft has confirmed earlier suspicions of an unseen moon hidden in a gap in Saturn's outer A ring. A new image and movie show the new moon and the waves it raises in the surrounding ring material."
From TFA:
Well, that just rolls off the tongue, doesn't it?
Looks like it's up to us...please post your suggestions for the new moon's name below.
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
It's not a movie! Geez! It's an animated GIF image!
I mean, really? Every time they find a new one, the things just keep getting smaller. What's next, a piece of ejecta from another moon the size and shape of a '74 Chevy Impala? Might as well start naming the debris in the rings.
"Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is living in a state of sin." -- John von Neumann
7km across? Compared to Saturn thats tiny. Thats like saying the ISS is a moon.
So how do you draw a distinction between a moon, a natural satellite, asteroids and space junk? You can either say the moon Earth has an asteroid orbiting it... or that Earth has many moons orbiting it, only one of which is large enough to see.
So if I pay the Russian space program to launch my 1kg rock in lower orbit, do I get to name my moon, or will they just name it
S/2005 SR26GC3.14159265357?
Which makes me wonder, have we named or numbered our own moon yet? Can I call shotgun and call it 'fp!'?
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
I'm no astronomer, but I remember hearing in Astronomy class about the Roche Limit, the absolute minimum distance that an orbiting body can be from a planet before it'd be disintegrated by the gravity. I also remember hearing that Saturn's rings could have been developed as a result of objects falling within the Roche Limit and disintegrating, thus adding to the ring. This object seems much larger than most of the ones in the ring structure, though. I find that really odd. But then again, IANAA. :P
"Black holes are where God divided by zero." - Steve Wright
Saturnian Moon "Cowboy Neil", the Slashdot god of "None of the Above"!
Always going forward, 'cause we can't find reverse.
man, where do they get these guys...
Map and Images of Titan from Hubble Space Telescope
Nasa Titan Photojournal
Saturnian Satellite Fact Sheet
Phoebe best image so far, from Voyager2 in 1981!
To confirm you're not a script, please piss in my ear.
Ask that question (Bread -> toast) to some people who's IQ lies on the wrong side of the bell curve - you'll be amazed at the looks you'll get.
..........FULL STOP.
At least this money is going to find new and useful things. Unlike my state (Kansas) which seems to think that the board of education needs to make us all a laughingstock and put their damn religion in our schools in every science textbook. Why not just require a class, like "Majority religion/philosophy-science indocrination". Look, I learned a LOT from reading Isaac Asimov essays, is there a reason I had to go the the library and check out books of essays from a science fiction author to learn about science? Ya! My state board of education is really badass, getting the job done, and is really cool!
the waves caused are asymetric, as if the moon is moving faster than the immediately surrounding debris. But thats impossible, because it would move the moon to a higher orbit, or the debris to a lower one, right? Can anyone explain this seemingly wierd phenomenon? Also notice the waves caused on the inner darker ring, what is the cause of that?
The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than the question of whether a submarine can swim.
I figure since the moon was found in the center of the Keeler Gap of Saturn's rings, it might as well be formally named "Keeler." Heck, it probably made the gap in the first place.
and no goatse reference in the 1st 30 posts!?
What is going on with you people...
Mongrel News all the news that fits and froths
I knew it was coming. I laughed anyway.
I'm repeating myself here (see my post below)...
This satellite is actually interesting since it may hold a key on how to retain a gap in the A-ring. It has to do with this small body of a satellite perturbing the neighboring, smaller dusts and removing them from the region effectively.
Somelike that can be studied numerically (n-body problems) to prove the ring's composition, etc. A nice test case for n-body problem.
[I really should be moderating today but...oh well.]
Yes, It's not moon.... It is MORON... I clearly heard the scientist say "I found moron somewhere in the king station".
There is a large particle moving through the gap, disturbing the rings and raising waves, yet the whole thing is stable??? Wouldn't the perturbations from the other particles in the ring eventually knock that particle out of its orbit???????? I'd swear it looks just like there is some kind of active feedback maintaining the system, ;-)
Damn straight.
Bush keeps the Major League Baseball mind control operations there. You think he got that last win only because his opponent was made by Dr. Frankenstein?
Oh please god no! /. look like a gay christmas tree. All of your suggestions are horrible. /. UID.
What are you on? That would make
1. If you need images, post a link. If you don't have your own webserver or atleast host space to put images on, please hand back your
2. Emoticons are plaque of messageboards. I want to strangle someone each time I use MSN after fresh install and haven't turned them off. What ever happened to the good old smileys?
3. Ok, you just have to be trolling...
Bot Assisted Blogging
does the moon run linux?
Seems the egotistical owner of the whiteboxlinux.net and whiteboxlinux.com domains has decided to offer them on ebay as a peace offering between wbel and himself.
This is really great news so lets hope someone with WBEL enthusiasm steps up to build a respectable community site.
... unsually large particle in Saturn's ring system??
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
umm... can anyone explain why they dont send color cameras into space? every picture seems to be either black and white or post-processed into some wierd infra-something false color. give us real color! the truth is out there!
This is an obvious troll, but god damn....
:) :( :\ >:]
I'm not even gonna touch on the idiocy of the HTML tags or in post images, just the fact that you want emoticons is fucking retarded. It already has emoticons you goon.
In other news Cassini has spotted more previously unseen dark redish brown rings around uranus!
And in further news Michael Jackson denies reports that he misunderstood the term "star gazing at minor moons" in relation to McCauley Culkin.
Stay in India. Don't get on the Internet. Immediately cease all attempts at creating jokes.
mod parent down. despite being accurate post is off topic.
With nuclear rocket technology, I wonder how hard it would be to attach such a rocket using a grapple-hook to the moon and drag it back to Earth. It would be nice to have a second moon ;)
Earth only has one. Adding a second moon would be like the modern day version of building the pyramids
Life is not for the lazy.
Thuktun Flishithy
(or Message Bearer)
From Niven & Pournelle's Footfall)
I find nothing shocking here. I'd say, the innermost ring is *closer* to Saturn, so it turns *faster* (thus the moon's gravity waves on it are going *ahead* of the moon's movement), while the outer ring is farther, so it turns slower, so the moon's waves on it are going rearwards compared to the moon's movement.
Just consider the rings themselves are turning, like the moon, even if you can't detect it (indeed the waves are a means of visualizing the ring's movement, maybe the only one at that scale)
Hervé
Herve S.
What I find even more odd is that the ripples are to the left of the moon on the inside of it's orbit and to the right on the outside.
Would you not expect the ripples to be behind the moon's direction of motion?
slashnik
It would be excellent if it was possible to somehow photograph individual rocks in the rings.
Hahahahahahahahaha.... He admitted being a windows loser!! Hahahahahahahahaha....
Bob's giving off some good x-ray emissions
Remember me to never come close to your friend!
(Are you sure you don't mean IR-radiation? X-Rays are rather unhealthy, and he would have to be *very* hot to emit a significant amount of X-Rays)
Hey they even called the planet after the Sega Saturn, why not called this new moon Dreamcast.
printf("Goodbye cruel world!\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b\b");
Planet Death?
The Killing Ball?
Death Moon?
Giant Hurt Ball?
The Deathdicle?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
i name this moon 4chan!!!!!!!!
"that's no moon, that's a spa--...oh, my mistake, actually it is. shoot him han."
Yeah a new moon of saturn IS pretty sweet.
Ok, go ahead and make standards like that after I get to name something. I think the next moon should be named Sat-uranus, in honor of saturn and the planet uranus.... In one of the rings.
I for one welcome our new Saturn moon-like rock speck.
I can see a number of people from my desk, all of whom are a decivolkswagen or smaller in size (ok a couple are probably bigger) and AFAIK all of them have names?
It's taken careful observation to recognize them, since their average albedo (i.e. brightness) is pretty low. But through a thorough analysis of donut-crumb tracks and the oscillation of the water in the cooler, I can pretty certainly infer their locations making direct visual identification a mere formality.
-Styopa
I think you mean newly discovered moon. I don't think moons are currently being manufactured.
I was just going to post the same question. Image here, for the curious.
"Our interests are to see if we can't scale it up to something more exciting," he said.
How is naming an object orbiting Saturn a moon a good use of your tax dollars?
On the other hand, your State Board of Education wants you to really THINK about where you came from, and not simply accept the implausible idea that God did it in six days nor the unlikely explanation that it just happened, and kept on just happening, for billions of years. They want you to question your assumptions, and to know what you're taking on faith.
You choose to put your faith in Isaac Asimov. Fine - you get the answer to the basic questions of life from a science fiction writer. You might be interested in the writings of that sage, L. Ron Hubbard, who took the next step and invented his own religion (Scientology).
Raise your children as if you were teaching them to raise your grandchildren, because you are.
Can you imagine what the view would look like from one of these tiny moons? This newly discovered one, along with several others, are tucked in between gaps in Saturn's rings. Imagine sitting on one of these moons, looking up toward this massive planet that fills the sky and a field of debris rings spreading out in both directions. Blows the mind!
It takes just a moment and an action to destroy. It takes some time and thought to create.
Four or five of you probably haven't seen this yet. The parent is referencing the parody here:
i sode3.html
http://www.sequentialpictures.com/moviestarwarsep
On another matter with the same impact as the dicovery of this new rock in space! A farmer in an undisclosed location has dicovered a new cow in his herd! neighbors were suspecting it, but confirmation of the extra bovine was made publice today! "less grass was discovered in an area of the field, and that got citizen concerned" thus an inquiry exposed the new cow! it's name is *%%#%?( or what the f$??%* in farmer translation.
No, no, no, you've got the wrong moon: you're thinking of Mimas, another moon of Saturn. (cool picture included)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Mimas, another moon of Saturn, is the one that looks just like the Death Star. If anything, rename it instead.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
In English, that is. It was called that before there were known to be any others. Now we use the term more generically.
With Luna, you do get lunar, but you also get "lunatic" from the affects that the moon has on people, and all romance versions of the first workday, Monday or Moonday, with Lunas, Lundi, etc.
You've got me curious.
What in the hell does a gay christmas tree look like?
Karnal
http://images.google.co.uk/images?client=firefox-a &rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial_s&q=gay+christ mas+tree&hl=en&btnG=Search+Images/
That's easily explained. The ripples appear for material that has just passed near the moon. Material inward of the moon's position orbits faster than the moon, so the ripples there appear ahead of the moon's orbit. Material outside moves slower, so the ripples appear behind the moon.
It's all about Kepler's third law.
There will be angular momentum exchange: the inner edge is tugging on the moon making the moon's orbit expand, while the outer material is tugging the opposite way making the orbit contract. It's possible for the whole thing to be in steady state, actually. Or the moon (and the gap) could be slowly migrating.
However, the ripples don't build up in time because they have a lot of time to go before they re-encounter the moon. In that time, the particles suffer copious collisions and the ripples tend to damp down again. (This isn't 100% true, at least in all cases. Recent work by my graduate advisor and a former student showed that the ring doesn't necessarily lose memory of the last encounter, although I don't think that that applies here.)
This object already has a name. It's called a shepherd moon. There's probably at least one in every ring gap.
Doh, "Smacks Head"
Thanks for the whack with the clue stick.
Let's see if I gan get my brian out of neutral before my next post.
krrrrunnnnch
nt
Too bad they can't delete spamming zealots. The internet has far too many Nazis as it is
In spanish, "luna" is literally "moon". We call it "la luna", which means "the moon". The title of this article would be "...nueva luna de Saturno", because there's no difference between luna the type of celestial body ("moon") and luna our moon ("luna").
My website
No one mentioned the little white ball thing that goes down the screen and then suddenly changes direction, WTF is that?
Are there bugs in space?
Stupid flies always getting in the picture.
To be fair, this is what I do for my research. It's not necessarily obvious, I just see this kind of thing every day.
with comercial space travel comming about and discovering of 7km moon, i can just see the future some rich hollywood star buys a private get away moon instead of an island
My favorite Stargate address:
P575309
(And yes, that is the correct naming convention for Stargate addresses.)
Any sufficiently well-organized community is indistinguishable from Government.
Tim!
Greatings Tim...
Greatings Arthur...
There is much you know, Tim...
Quite...