Friday, 1 July 2011

Saturn?s greatest kids play look-a-boo Bad Astronomy

I spent all day long yesterday writing a 2000-word article for any print venue to become named later, and also the weather outdoors is sunny and wonderful and pleading to become biked in, and so i am disinclined to create something deep and philosophical today. So rather here is simply a simply way-awesome picture from Cassini drawn in 2009, showing the Saturnian moon Rhea peeking from behind the much bigger Titan:

[Click to eneldergodenate.]

Rhea is a touch over 1500 km (900 miles) across, and Titan 2600 km (1550 miles). However, within this shot, Rhea was almost 2 . 5 occasions farther away than her large sister, therefore it looks more compact than it truly is. Titan includes a thick atmosphere, that is pretty apparent within the picture, while Rhea is essentially a ginormous iceball.

Still, err. Titan and Rhea would be the two biggest moons of Saturn, but to tell the truth Titan is indeed a lot bigger then Rhea, about 1.7 occasions the diameter. Why this type of large gap in dimensions Jupiter s two biggest moons, Ganymede and Callisto, tend to be closer together in dimensions (5260 and 4820 km, correspondingly), and also you must see Jupiter s 4th biggest moon, Europa, to obtain that same ratio of just one.7 in diameters.

It appears in my experience that Saturn and Jupiter are telling us something concerning the physics of how their moons created. But what can it be Titan orbits more than two times as not even close to Saturn as Rhea, while Ganymede is really nearer to Jupiter than Callisto. Is the fact that important Did individuals moons form at other distances and obtain their orbits jostled through gravitational interactions over vast amounts of years, possibly even switching positions

They are pretty fundamental questions, however it s questions such as these contributing to fundamental experience how our photo voltaic system created and transformed as time continued.

And dangit! I suppose Used to do obtain a little deep and philosophical here. Ah well, so what can I only say Images such as this are extremely pretty and thus interesting to check out, they spark a myriad of thoughts during my mind. And also the more I actually do that, the greater I want to achieve that. Science is much like that: addictive, however in a great way.

Damn! Made it happen again.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute


Related posts:

- Cassini s pentaverate
- Peeking past Rhea
- Dione and Rhea, relaxing in a tree
- Titanic slice

This summer first, 2011 11:30 AM Tags: Callisto, Cassini, Ganymede, Rhea, Saturn, Titan
by Phil Plait in Astronomy, Awesome stuff, Bit of mind, Pretty pictures, Science 1 comments Feed Trackback >



retail pos pos retail

No comments:

Post a Comment