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Saturn's New Moons Named
Posted by
CowboyNeal
on Sat Feb 26, 2005 10:14 AM
from the huey-dewey-and-louie dept.
from the huey-dewey-and-louie dept.
sebFlyte writes "The BBC is reporting that three new moons found orbiting Saturn at the end of last year have been named. 'Two moons detected in August have been given the names Methone and Pallene, while another found in October has been provisionally named Polydeuces.' Polydeuces is also reported as being a very strange object-- a trojan moon. It sits in a spot near a larger moon where the gravitational pull of the other moon (Dione here) and the planet cancel each other out."
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I can see it now... (Score:2, Funny)
Planet Gigolo
It's a trap! (Score:5, Funny)
Lagrange Points (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Lagrange Points (Score:3, Funny)
"Yes, that's quite intuitive to me."
Don't they know that these phrases convey no useful information and only serve the purpose of making the nerd seem even more self-centered and arrogant?
Sure, you can impress us and show us how smart you are, but please don't do it by telling us "golly, i'm so smart."
It's quite obnoxious.
Re:Lagrange Points (Score:2)
Don't they know that these phrases convey no useful information and only serve the purpose of making the nerd seem even more self-centered and arrogant? Sure, you can impress us and show us how smart you are, but please don't do it by telling us "golly, i'm so smart."
I felt saying it was "intuitive" conveyed useful information: the fact that I don't any real understand of the mechnics involved, but that it "feels right
Re:Lagrange Points (Score:2)
It's exactly that, the arrogance of not having any clue about the actual math involved, but still claiming to be able to tell which statements "feel right" and which don't.
Re:Lagrange Points (Score:2)
Re:Lagrange Points (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:Lagrange Points (Score:2)
Re:Lagrange Points (Score:3, Insightful)
Trojan Moon! (Score:5, Funny)
About the names (Score:3, Funny)
Stability? (Score:3, Interesting)
How can that possibly be stable? Wouldn't the slightest deviation lead to the moon coming crashing down in either direction?
Re:Stability? (Score:2)
Linky goodness. [montana.edu]
"sits" is misleading Re:Stability? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Fun with Newton & Lagrange (Score:5, Informative)
In celestial mechanics, Lagrange points come up in the three-body problem, where you have two large bodies (eg Sun and planet, planet and large moon) and one small object (a Trojan asteroid, spacecraft, new Saturn moon).
Lagrange points are the five places relative to the two large objects, where the third object will be held at the same position - relative to those two objects - in its orbit. In other words, there will be a net force on the third object that will result in it accelerating around the largest object at the same rate as the second largest object.*
A Lagrange point is stable if an object near by the L point will tend to be pulled towards or orbit around that point if it's a bit off the exact point. The L point is unstable if the object tends to be pulled further away from it once it wanders a little away.
The L1 point (in between the two large bodies), L4 and L5 points (60 deg ahead and behind the orbiting large body) are stable, the L2 and L3 points are unstable. Many of our solar observing spacecraft get sent to orbit the L1 point.
*(Center of mass discussion left out for relative simplicity)
Parent
Re:Fun with Newton & Lagrange (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Stability? (Score:3, Informative)
The lagrange spot isn't an absolute, just as with any field, there will be areas of decreasing influence. The moon can safely deviate within these grey areas, with no fear of crashing down. Seeing as how it's in orbat withing this lagrange area, it is fairly stable, because as per what that means, it's kinda stuck there by opposing forces.
Should some (fairly large) foreign space object crash into it, then you may have cause to
Re:Stability? (Score:3, Informative)
You can orbit around a stable L-point, and an object "floating" (i.e., little acceleration relative to the point) near it will tend to be attracted to it - and thus be stable (there are unstable Lagrange points as well, which are points in the gravity interaction that don't function like this, but are still usable).
L-1 between S
What? No law passed? (Score:3, Funny)
Lagrange point (Score:4, Informative)
Usually closer to the smaller of the two bodies, this point is a common location of sci-fi space stations, as there is no need to use an orbit to keep the station from decaying back into the larger bodies atmosphere.
Re:Lagrange point (Score:2)
Re:Lagrange point (Score:2, Informative)
See my other post in this thread:
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=140724 &threshold=1&commentsort=0&tid=160&tid=14&mode=thr ead&pid=11786996 [slashdot.org]
Dione (Score:2)
Me too, cya.
Naming & Mythology (Score:5, Informative)
All depends on your point of view (Score:5, Funny)
When asked why they had named the moon now after millenia of observation, one student from Saturn's top university said, "Why not, you know? I mean, like, we had named everything else of importance, dude. Even the unimportant places. So like this was all that was left."
No comment could be received from inhabitants of !3kd8dgh, since they don't speak Standard Galactic. Moreover, they laughably think they are the only inhabitanted planet in the system, and it's considered taboo to disabuse them of this ignorance.
Who named them? (Score:2)
This looks like a job for... (Score:4, Funny)
Oh moon, the way you circle around me makes my weather patterns get all disrupted. You are just the perfect little moon, I love you.
Oh Saturn, I think its time for some gravitational pull...
How are moons still being found? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How are moons still being found? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:How are moons still being found? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:How are moons still being found? (Score:2)
Re:How are moons still being found? (Score:2)
Because we can only see light (well, electromagnetic radiation, to be more precise). While stars give off incredible amounts of light, moons only (poorly) reflect the light from those stars.
Re:How are moons still being found? (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, it should be noted that people only started doing CCD-based searches about 7 or 8 years ago. It's sort of a case where a
Moon = Name of Earth's Satellite (Score:2, Informative)
The title of this article should be: Saturn's New Satellites Named.
Moon = a common term for natural satellites (Score:3, Informative)
The term Moon refers, among other things, to:
1. The Earth's only natural satellite, the Moon.
2. A common term for other natural satellites.
Who decides? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Who decides? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Hang on... Who Named them? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Can you say... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Why Greek / Roman names? (Score:2, Funny)
No that's not a death star! It's just Hitler!
Re:Why Greek / Roman names? (Score:2, Insightful)
Because we're more than likely to get into pissing contests over who or what to name the planets after. I certainly wouldn't like to have to visit Planet Nixon or the moon Roosevelt.
Re:Why Greek / Roman names? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Why Greek / Roman names? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Re:Why Greek / Roman names? (Score:2)
Re:Why Greek / Roman names? (Score:2)
Unfortunately, if space travel becomes common, I shudder to think of who'll be naming distant planets. Corporations would be bad enough (Planet Starbuck). However, I wonder if it will end up like streets in a suburban sub-division (which generally are just made up by the contractor). A friend of mine lives on a short street called Bobbiedell Lane. What if there wa
Re:Why Greek / Roman names? (Score:3, Funny)
System Microsoft. Where the Sun BSOD's once a year.
Same gods, but... (Score:2)
Jupiter, Mars, Venus, etc, are all Roman names. Greek names would've been Zeus, Aries, Aphrodite...
Re:Whoever named Methone (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Trojans schmojans (Score:2)
WTF? Yeah, you're right, they were engineered using imaginary equations. Maybe according to the physics you took (and probably didn't understand) in high school, they can't fly, but to claim the most fundamental science we as humans can grasp can't explain helicopter flight is both incredibly stupid and incredibly closed minded. Spend five seconds googling and you can see the variety of books that exist solely for studying the dynamics of helicopter flight.