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Strange New Objects Seen In Saturn's Rings
Every 15 Earth years, Saturn has its equinox — the time during which its rotational axis is perpendicular to the rays from the sun, so that the sun is always directly "overhead" of Saturn's equator. This is significant because Saturn's rings orbit over the equator, so during the equinox, light from the sun hits them edge-on. This means that any objects wider than the rings, or orbiting above or below them, cast long shadows and are much easier to see. For the first time, we're able to get detailed images of these objects, thanks to Cassini. A moonlet, perhaps 1,300 feet in diameter, has been discovered in the B-ring, and the Bad Astronomy blog points out another object that seems to be bursting through the F-ring. Quoting: "The upward-angled structure is definitely real, as witnessed by the shadow it's casting on the ring material to the lower left. And what's with the bright patch right where this object seems to have slammed into the rings? Did it shatter millions of icy particles, revealing their shinier interior material, making them brighter? Clearly, something awesome and amazing happened here.
I haven't been able to find a reference that states the precise radial location of this object. Does anyone here have that information?
The Voyager 2 photopolarimeter data from 1981 suggested the presence of a small object in Saturn's B ring at a radial distance of around 109,000 km.
It would be interesting to know whether this is confirmation of that object, 28 years later.
(I have a vested interest: I was the principal author on the Voyager paper: Icarus 54, 267 (1983).)
It was changed to Jupiter for the movie because Stanley Kubrick couldn't find a good image of Saturn (this was 1968, so a lot of the great images we have today didn't exist.) The book retains the original planet of Saturn, yet strangely it gets changed to Jupiter in the later books (I guess to be canon with the movie?)
If you can talk brilliantly enough about a problem, it can create the consoling illusion that it has been mastered.
producers who decided Americans were too stupid to know what a Newton is.
Of course we know what a Newton is... you just have to decide if you're going to go with one of the newer fruit varieties or to stick with the classic Fig.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fig_Newton)