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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.
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~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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
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.
Imagine being in England for a moment. It's 3 a.m., and you're sitting on one side of the Thames River.
/too much/ light to see Bob; all you see are stars, so to speak, drowning out the nearby planets. Well, in x-ray mode, your camera can see that while those stars are emitting x-rays, so is Bob, just like before. You're not seeing a faint image of Bob drowned out by the only light illuminating him, you see Bob's x-ray signature approximately ten feet to the right of that cluster of streetligts.
Your friend Bob is perched in his chair on the other side.
Your camera's all set up and ready to snap a picture. Just when you're about to snap, you realize that the nearest streetlight is three miles to Bob's left. Seeing that the Thames isn't a sneeze's distance across, you know that the dinky flash on your camera is pretty useless.
You whip out your trusty imaging spectrometer camera lens and line up the shot with Bob again. Bob's giving off some good x-ray emissions, and those come across just fine.
You could've used a really, really awesome lens and captured a bad photo of Bob--he still reflects some light, though it's a ridiculously small amount--but the IR lens gave you a more descriptive picture of Bob. Why? Mr Bob the Planet Man doesn't give off his own visible light, but he certainly emits x-rays on his own.
This scales higher:
In this new-but-similar scenario, you're flying over England. You're trying to take a picture of Bob and his lazy ass, but all you can see, no matter how much light you shine down onto the city below, are the lights from the buildings, bridges, and streetlamps. There's just too much noise to find ol' Bob in that galaxy of lumens.
You've got all these lights shining on Bob, but unlike the first scenario, there's
The universe is a dark place, but sometimes it can be TOO bright! It's a good thing I remembered a towel!
Mikey-San
Karma: +Eleventy billion (mostly affected by watching Celebrity Jeopardy)
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.
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.
You nailed it. The ring material inside the S/2005 S1's position is moving faster than the moon, so the waves that the moon excites appear ahead of the moon's present position. (That material just had a close encounter.) The other edge of the gap is orbiting more slowly, so the moon PASSES it, so the waves appear behind the moon.
I'd avoid the word "turning" because it suggests a solid object. The rings are anything but solid.
There are other ways to make asymmetries in these wakes. If the moon isn't well-centered in the gap (although it isn't clear why it wouldn't be) or has a significant orbital eccentricity, you'll get asymmetry as well.