Cassini Confirms New Moon of Saturn 207
pipcorona writes ""In a spectacular kick-off to its first season of prime ring viewing, which began last month, the Cassini spacecraft has confirmed earlier suspicions of an unseen moon hidden in a gap in Saturn's outer A ring. A new image and movie show the new moon and the waves it raises in the surrounding ring material."
What's so special about a new moon? (Score:5, Interesting)
Roche limit? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:So everythings a moon now? (Score:5, Interesting)
The significant thing is this: this moon, how small it is, may regulate the way a gap in the A-ring evolves (or stay clear of smaller rocks),
The effect of the moon's gravity is small, but not small enough to be ignored by the material nearby. Some smart guys can run some numerical analysis to study what the rings are made of, and how a single massive (relatively) body can perturb its surrounding smaller particles.
Interesting that... (Score:4, Interesting)
Test for grav. pertubation (Score:3, Interesting)
This satellite is actually interesting since it may hold a key on how to retain a gap in the A-ring. It has to do with this small body of a satellite perturbing the neighboring, smaller dusts and removing them from the region effectively.
Somelike that can be studied numerically (n-body problems) to prove the ring's composition, etc. A nice test case for n-body problem.
[I really should be moderating today but...oh well.]
Re:Images! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:So everythings a moon now? (Score:3, Interesting)
Hmm, I thought the actual name was "the Moon", and Luna a term rarely used to distinguish it from other moons whenever necessary. Why would people rarely use an actual name?
That it's the actual name is as debatable as Sol is the actual name for the Sun, something I also can't really say, even if we have "solar".
I guess both these names can be said to be occasionaly used to personify these celestial bodies though.
Re:In space no one can see your color? (Score:5, Interesting)
Your friend Bob is perched in his chair on the other side.
Your camera's all set up and ready to snap a picture. Just when you're about to snap, you realize that the nearest streetlight is three miles to Bob's left. Seeing that the Thames isn't a sneeze's distance across, you know that the dinky flash on your camera is pretty useless.
You whip out your trusty imaging spectrometer camera lens and line up the shot with Bob again. Bob's giving off some good x-ray emissions, and those come across just fine.
You could've used a really, really awesome lens and captured a bad photo of Bob--he still reflects some light, though it's a ridiculously small amount--but the IR lens gave you a more descriptive picture of Bob. Why? Mr Bob the Planet Man doesn't give off his own visible light, but he certainly emits x-rays on his own.
This scales higher:
In this new-but-similar scenario, you're flying over England. You're trying to take a picture of Bob and his lazy ass, but all you can see, no matter how much light you shine down onto the city below, are the lights from the buildings, bridges, and streetlamps. There's just too much noise to find ol' Bob in that galaxy of lumens.
You've got all these lights shining on Bob, but unlike the first scenario, there's
The universe is a dark place, but sometimes it can be TOO bright! It's a good thing I remembered a towel!
Re:So everythings a moon now? (Score:2, Interesting)
And as www.susning.nu says about Terra (sorry, swedish site) 'Terra is a latin noun that means land. On old maps you can see the words like terra ingocnita, which means unknown land'.