Posted on 06/15/2004 7:22:32 AM PDT by dead
Washington: A US-European space probe that will start orbiting Saturn this month has already shown "spectacular" images of the planet's crater-pocked Phoebe moon, scientists said on Monday.
The Cassini-Huygens probe, which was launched on October 15, 1997, is to start orbiting Saturn on June 30. It passed within 2068 kilometres of Phoebe on Friday, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said.
Cassini-Huygens is a $US3 billion ($A4.31 billion) joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
"What spectacular images. So sharp and clear and showing a great many geological features, large and small," said Carolyn Porco, Cassini Imaging Team leader at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
Phoebe, discovered in 1898 by the American astronomer William Henry Pickering, is 220 kilometres wide and about 13 million kilometres from Saturn.
"What we are seeing is very neat," said Torrence Johnson, Cassini imaging team member at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
"Phoebe is a heavily cratered body. We might be seeing one of the chunks from the formation of the solar system, 4.5 billion years ago," Johnson said.
Gerhard Neukum, an imaging team member from Freie University in Berlin, added: "It is very interesting and quite clear that a lot of craters smaller than a kilometre are visible.
"This means, besides the big-ones, lots of projectiles smaller than 100 metres have hit Phoebe."
The origin of the projectiles that slammed on the moon is unknown.
"Looking at those big 50-kilometre craters, one has to wonder whether their impact ejecta might be the other tiny moons that orbit Saturn on paths much like Phoebe's," said Joseph Burns, another team member and professor at Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.
Cassini-Huygens will study Saturn, its rings and principal moons for four years. Once it reached its destination, the probe would have travelled 3.5 billion kilometres during its nearly seven-year trip to Saturn.
It will have passed 31 of Saturn's moons during the voyage.
On December 25, the Cassini orbiter will release its Huygens probe so it can land three weeks later on Saturn's largest moon, Titan, which has a diameter of more than 5000 kms. NASA built Cassini, while ESA built Huygens.
Agence France-Presse
Looks a little bit like a heavily-used golf ball.
Why do these comments sound so lame ?
Why does a reporter think this particular one deserves reporting ?
At 12 o'clock from the center of the crater and almost dead center in the photo ... there's an object casting a shadow ... is that an alien spaceship?
When that sucker gets smacked, it gets smacked good!!!
No - it's the ESA's Beagle lander. A bit off course, though...
Naaaa, I just looked at it under photo shop magnification, and it is the USS Enterprise. Nothing alien about it.
I think it looks like Dennis Kucinich's campaign bus.
The explanation given on JPL's site was boulders that slid down the crater walls, probably from impacts on other parts of the tiny moon.
"That's no moon...it's a space station."
I wondered why I never see pennies in any of the fountains in Washington DC, but then I remembered that the IRS is here. Probably come around and fish them out at night.
Hey Martin, on your previous recommendation, I downloaded Celestia. Pretty cool! Kind of like a cut down version of 'Starry Nights'.
What is "Starry Nights" and where can I try it out? Is it free?
Celestia is AWESOME! <|:)~
LOL!
Starry Night is not free, but it is very sophisticated. There are two versions- the 'Home' version, and the 'Pro' version. If I ever get my life straightened out to where I can think about discretionary expenditures, I am going to get a copy of 'Pro', which I can interface with my telescope for aiming, finding and tracking. That and a CCD, and I can sit in the house with good winter skies, and do astrophotographic captures from the warmth of the house. :-)
There are some other cool freebies out there, and one will do scope control, IIRC.
Starry Night
http://www.starrynight.com/
Desktop Planetarium and Charting
http://dmoz.org/Science/Astronomy/Software/Desktop_Planetarium_and_Charting/
OIC
Well, I still like Celestia for FREEEEEEEEEE <|:)~
I had a desktop planetarium program that I got for free that wasn't as pretty as Celestia, but would interface with my scope. I think it was one of the links on the page that I posted- don't recall which.
Meantime, here's some cool backyard scope shots of the International Space Station.
http://freespace.virgin.net/philip.masding/
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