Are Belong To DEMOCRATS
Are Belong To DEMOCRATS
These pictures were taken by Cassini, which is (in the words of Popular Mechanics) the "biggest, baddest mission ever flown by NASA". Sent into space nearly 7 years ago on Oct. 15, 1997, it had to fly over 3 billion miles to get to it's final destination: Saturn. It safely arrived on July 1, 2004, but had to whip by Venus twice, the Earth once, and finally Jupiter along the way to gain speed.
During the trip from Earth to Saturn, Cassini took a number of pictures to calibrate it's instruments. In doing so, it has taken some of the most detailed pictures ever of Jupiter, Jupiter's moons, asteroids, and even our moon. These pictures are mind blowing. The detail and scale of these pictures have never been achieved, not even by Hollywood. Star Wars looks cool. This is awe inspiring.
So, take a look at the pictures already. And after, if you still want more, go to my Links section, under the header On Space...
for links to my favorite space-related websites. And yes, there are lots of space-related news sites, info sites, and fan sites. This is one of them.
Yesterday, there were 31 moons circling Saturn. Or rather, 31 moons that any human has ever laid eyes on. Today, there are 33 moons circling Saturn that any human has ever laid eyes on.
That's right, Cassini has descovered two new moons around Saturn. They are the smallest Saturian moons found yet: one is smaller than the city of Boulder, Colorado. They are provisionally named S/2004 S1 and S/2004 S2. They will find some minor Greek or Roman god to name them after soon, I should think. Of course, when they do, I will have some more "Breaking News" for you.
Factoid:
The moons were first seen by Dr. Sebastien Charnoz, a planetary dynamicist [...]
Discovering these faint satellites was an exciting experience, especially the feeling of being the first person to see a new body of our solar system,said Charnoz.I had looked for such objects for weeks while at my office in Paris, but it was only once on holiday, using my laptop, that my code eventually detected them. This tells me I should take more holidays.
Click a picture to see full size version
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Saturn |
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Saturn's Moons |
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