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."

Comments

Re:So everythings a moon now?

[Daedalus-Ubergeek]

I do believe our own moon is named Luna, which would be where you get the word "Lunar", although you rarely ever hear anybody call the moon by its actual name.

Re:So everythings a moon now?

[metroplex]

Actually, in all Romance Languages (those derived by latin), the Earth's moon is called something like "Luna".

• Italian: Luna
• French: Lune
• Spanish: Luna
• Portuguese: Lua
• Romanian: Luna

Re:In space no one can see your color?

[bcwright]

Resolution. Most space cameras work by detecting light falling on a CCD (Charge-Coupled Device); if the camera was full color, then the resolution would be cut by at least 2/3 because you'd have to devote 1/3 of the CCD to each of the primary colors. (It might be even worse than that if your imaging system wasn't 100% efficient at directing the color components to the proper pels on the CCD). You can obtain the effect of a color camera by using different lens filters and taking multiple pictures and then composing them into a single image - this is what's usually done when a color photograph is desired. By doing that you can produce an image that's exactly what you could obtain with a color camera, but at a higher resolution and without having to use a higher resolution CCD. Also, that way your pictures aren't limited to using a selection of color components that are compatible with those the human eye sees - you can use the filters to "see" parts of the spectrum outside the range that's visible to the human eye.

Re:Roche limit?

[imsabbel]

The Roche limit only works for large bodies, when you assume that the moon is only held together by its own gravity.

For very small, rocky moons, the tensile strenght of the rock itselv enabls them to exist nearer than the roche limit. Its nothing extremely longtime-stable, but otoh, the tidal forces on a small moon arent very large.

Also, the roche limit is only a contant (2.xxx*R_bigplanet or so) if the bodies have the same density. If the objects is, for example, a captured iron asteroid, its roche limit can be VERY close to a not very dense saturn.