Cassini-Huygens Reaches Phoebe 178
Anonymous Explorer writes "The Cassini-Huygens
probe is set to fly by the largest outer Saturn moon of Phoebe today. Cassini will be roughly 2000 km from the surface of Phoebe at 1:56 Pacific time Friday, June 11. Thats
pretty darn close. The newest
images of Phoebe are already thousands of times better than the previous ones taken by the Voyager
2 mission in 1981. Phoebe is interesting in that it maintains a retrograde orbit around Saturn. This has lead to the hypothesis that it is an ancient asteroid that has been captured by the gravitational pull from Saturn. Phoebe may provide some important insights into the composition of early building blocks of our planets. Phoebe was discovered in 1898 by American astronomer William
Pickering. As always, discussion about this mission can be found at
#cassini on irc.freenode.net."
All this and more... (Score:0, Funny)
Re:No Different (Score:5, Funny)
If Cassini confirms your theory that Phoebe is a probe, I think that will be a very valuable insight. It will mean there are aliens that were building probes long before us, and they could build probes that are hundreds of miles wide.
Parking (Score:5, Funny)
Re:No Different (Score:2, Funny)
Like Uranus? -- Sorry.. had to.
Re:For those of us who aren't astrophysicists. (Score:1, Funny)
you set yourself up (Score:5, Funny)
Gradient Shading.. (Score:2, Funny)
mmm gradient shading
Re:For those of us who aren't astrophysicists. (Score:5, Funny)
I use GIS quite a lot and didn't know that geographical information systems had anything to do with space exploration or Lisa Kudrow. To think all this time all I've been doing with my GIS is mapping and spatial analysis.
I'll have to fire up ArcView and try out these new features you describe...
Re:All this and more... (Score:2, Funny)
But I was too late.
-sigh-
I hate that show, and am convinced that it only suceeded because it ran after the simpsons.
When you send a probe to a ringed gas giant (Score:5, Funny)
Damn you Europeans! (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Parking (Score:3, Funny)
"That's no moon... it's a captured carbonaceous asteroid."
Re:you set yourself up (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Parking (Score:3, Funny)
Come on, it's funny on Fark.
Re:Use Celestia to preview the image quality (Score:1, Funny)
Re:you set yourself up (Score:5, Funny)
Something always gets lost in translation. That's what's hard to understand. For instance, here's the original:
YOU SET YOURSELF UP.
ALL THESE WORLDS ARE BELONG TO YOU EXCEPT EUROPA.
YOU HAVE NO CHANCE TO LAND THERE MAKE YOUR TIME.
Re:you set yourself up (Score:2, Funny)
No, he said "well regulated" :-)