Posted on 06/21/2015 7:10:57 AM PDT by SunkenCiv
Explanation: On Saturn, the rings tell you the season. On Earth, today marks a solstice, the time when the Earth's spin axis tilts directly toward the Sun. On Earth's northern hemisphere, today is the Summer Solstice, the day of maximum daylight. Since Saturn's grand rings orbit along the planet's equator, these rings appear most prominent -- from the direction of the Sun -- when the Saturn's spin axis points toward the Sun. Conversely, when Saturn's spin axis points to the side, an equinox occurs and the edge-on rings are hard to see. In the featured montage, images of Saturn over the past 11 years have been superposed to show the giant planet passing from southern summer toward northern summer. Although Saturn will only reach its northern summer solstice in 2017 May, the image of Saturn most analogous to today's Earth solstice is the bottommost one.
(Excerpt) Read more at 129.164.179.22 ...
[Credit and Copyright: Damian Peach/SEN]
You can actually see these various different angles of Saturn through a decent backyard telescope. As our two planets orbit the Sun the orientation of Saturn and its ring system changes from our perspective.
It looks gorgeous!!
Happy Summer Solstice, everybody!!
Oh dang, that’s right. Now the days start to shorten again. That sucks.
Dear Sunken,
Have you ever questioned the validity of “the first day of summer”, when it is at the top of ‘the roller coaster ride’?
Now, have you questioned the validity of ‘the first day of Winter’, when it is at the exact bottom of the roller coaster ride?
Now, to finish, consider the equinoxes, the platforms that you enter and exit the roller coaster cars.
graph:
Yeah, actually that has bugged me since I first found out how the British refer to it as “midsummer’s day” — the Earth hasn’t warmed up enough around here to do planting until a way into May, and there’s a concern about a hard frost until after May 1, which (with “midsummer” being in the middle) would fall after the beginning of summer.
In the US, the summer begins with Memorial Day weekend, and ends with Labor Day weekend.
I shot this image very recently even though I'm not really set up for planetary work.
I attempted to process out more surface detail/data but was unable.
Must a copyright or watermark issue. I can see the image fine. I’ll try to fix it.
Thanks.
Again, I am not set up for planetary imaging so this is all the data I could pull out in processing. I shot this about 2 weeks ago.
Sorry about the other image. I could see it fine, so it must have been a watermark type issue. Hopefully this one appears on your monitor.
Yup, it’s there, thanks!
Great. Btw, I always enjoy looking at the APD you put up.
Thanks
My pleasure!
Dear Sunken,
I know that there is a ‘normal’ American calendar, but for following the seasonal calendar, which is a ‘version 2.0’ of the olde Celtic calendar, “Wheel of the Year”, here are the established calendar days:
Feb. 2, Imbolc, Candlemas, St. Brigit, 1st shoots come up through the snow, 1st day of Spring;
March 21, Eostre or Ostara - equinox;
May 1, Beltane, ‘Blade and the Cup’, 1st day Summer;
June 21, Lughnassa, Litha, Midsummer - solstice;
Aug. 1, Lammas or Loafmass, 1st Harvest -corn, 1st day of Fall;
Sept. 21, Mabon, 2nd Harvest - grain, (cornucopia flows), equinox;
Oct. 31, Samhain, or Hallowe’en, Last harvest -meats, 1st day of Winter;
Dec. 21, Yule - solstice.
Mind you, I mentioned ‘Celtic’, which predates any Marxist assumptions of ownership to May 1st.
The ‘American Summer’ extends between federal government sanctioned three day ‘holidays’, of which one USED TO BE A SOLEMNITY, (as opposed to mattress sales), to one that was passed by a DEMOCRATIC Congress, to reward all the political hacks with union ties.
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