Strongest lightning storm on record strikes Saturn | |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 3272 ![]() 02/15/2006 03:29 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Super Structure User ID: 73523 ![]() 02/15/2006 03:31 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Regular_Joe User ID: 73491 ![]() 02/15/2006 03:49 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 5068 ![]() 02/15/2006 03:50 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 72558 ![]() 02/15/2006 07:15 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
purple-x User ID: 72409 ![]() 02/15/2006 07:19 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 67885 ![]() 02/15/2006 07:24 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 16007 ![]() 02/15/2006 07:46 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | Please remember the instruments measuring the lightning have not been there very long. Cassini has been at Sautrn less than two years, and the two Voyagers didn't get to spend much tome at Saturn either. This kind of storm may not be that unusual. |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 72558 ![]() 02/15/2006 07:48 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Anonymous Coward User ID: 73489 ![]() 02/15/2006 07:53 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Earth420 (OP) User ID: 62251 ![]() 02/15/2006 09:11 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |
Earth420 (OP) User ID: 62251 ![]() 02/15/2006 09:19 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | [link to www.newscientistspace.com] Saturn's inner moons more rubble than ice 13:58 14 February 2006 Saturn's small, inner moons may not be huge chunks of ice as once thought, but rather "rubble piles" of material built up around small central cores, a team of Cassini scientists suggests. Before the Cassini mission to Saturns moons, scientists knew small moons such as Pan, Atlas, Janus and Epimetheus orbited the ringed planet. "But we didn't have good pictures of them. We didn't have measurements of their shape," says Carolyn Porco, Cassini Imaging Science Team leader from the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, US. "It could have been that they were collisional shards, monolithic pieces of ice." But now that Cassini has relayed images of those satellites back to Earth and scientists have examined the moons' shapes, estimated their masses and calculated their densities, Porco says that does not look to be the case. Instead, she says, the "rounded football" shape of Calypso, Telesto (pictured), Epimetheus, Janus, Pandora, Prometheus, Atlas and Pan is characteristic of accreted bodies where material has built up around a core. The moons are "almost undoubtedly rubble piles" formed through accretion, Porco told New Scientist. Scientists still do not have reliable masses for two of the so-called Trojan moons of Saturn Telesto and Calypso but the team includes them as satellites likely to have been accreted based on their shape in Cassini's recent pictures. The very low densities between about 0.4 and 0.6 grams per cubic centimetre calculated for the moons with known masses further support the "rubble pile" theory. The team is scheduled to present its results at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Texas, US, in March 2006. Peace Love to Mother Earth Always |
purple-x User ID: 72409 ![]() 02/15/2006 09:26 PM Report Abusive Post Report Copyright Violation | |