#June2011
Saturn’s Moon Rhea Is A Camera Hog, But She’s Pretty So It Works.
Enlarge. | Via.
Check out Saturn’s moon Rhea in this picture. Stylin’, profilin’. Dominating the picture taking by Cassini, Rhea is hard to miss. This picture ain’t hers alone though, no sir. It’s a veritable gathering of Saturn’s family.
No Comments
Saturn Is Linked To Its Moon Enceladus By An Electron Beam. Righteous.
If you’re ever feeling dulled with reality, just follow some fucking astronomy news. It’ll moisten your science-fiction glands, infusing you with the knowledge that the universe is fucking awesome. Take for example: Saturn is linked to its moon Enceladus by a fucking electron beam.
Titan’s Orbit Proves It Has A Giant Ocean Underneath It’s Surface? Gnarly!
Scientific Astronomical Gurus have done some wizardy science crunching and come to a tenuous and probably incorrect but awesome conclusion: Saturn’s moon, Titan, has a giant ass ocean underneath its surface.
One of Saturn’s Moon Got Itself A Face Only Momma Loves.
Titan Has Methane Rainstorms and Floods. Awesome.
Saturn’s Moon Enceladus Is A Sexy Ball Of Ice.
Saturn’s Rings Are Slicing Titan’s Throat.
Enlarge. | Via.
That’s Saturn’s moon, Titan. Straight chillin’, balancing on top of Saturn’s gorgeous rings. Sort of. The powers of perspective, summoned! Consummated. But what is really interesting is how fucking thin Saturn’s rings are. Something I don’t really stop and contemplate. Well, I don’t contemplate much, but that’s obvious.
Saturn’s Great White Spot Is A Thousand-Mile Storm. Spacesplooge.
[Enlarge.]
Everyone knows about Jupiter’s Red Spot. And for good reason, ’cause it’s goddamn impressive. But did you know that Saturn has its own friggin’ insane spot? Not to be outdone by its solar system brethren, Saturn has a Great White Spot that is a thousand-mile storm.
The Great White Spot is the lesser known, Saturnian equivalent of Jupiter’s Great Red Spot. It’s the name given to periodic storms that flare up about every 28.5 years, previously showing up in 1876, 1903, 1933, 1960, and 1990. As such, we shouldn’t be expecting another appearance until around 2018, although huge, Spot-like storms do occasionally show up at times that don’t fit the cycle, including 1994 and 2006.
G’damn! Thanks to a new image by the Cassini probe taken on Christmas Eve, we may have an insane image of another occurrence:
torms like these are thought to be created by thermal instability, which throws up tons of material from the planet’s lower atmosphere up into the higher regions. When these storms overlap with the turning of Saturn’s seasonal cycle every 28 or so years, the storm becomes so massive that it can encircle the entire planet, creating the Great White Spot.
[cont]
Technically speaking, we don’t know yet whether this particular storm will develop into a full-fledged Great White Spot. Of course, even if it doesn’t technically qualify for “great” status, we’re still talking about a storm system that you could fit this week’s northeastern blizzard into a dozen times over.
If that shit isn’t mindblowing enough, Bad Astronomy puts it into even crazier perspective:
This image, taken with a blue filter, shows the storm clearly. The main spot is huge, about 6,000 km (3600 miles) across – half the size of Earth! Including the tail streaming off to the right, the whole system is over 60,000 km (36,000 miles) long.
Whether this is a new iteration of the son of a bitch Great White Spot, or just an enormous storm enough to send me into a full-blown existential crisis, it’s goddamn gorgeous.
Giant Ice Volcano Found On Titan? Cryovolcano Party!
Randy Kirk thinks that there’s an ice volcano on Saturn. And dammit, I hope the guy is right. Tell us more, New Scientist!
Named Sotra, the volcano is nearly 1 kilometre tall and has a 1.6-kilometre-deep pit alongside it. Surrounded by giant sand dunes, it is thought to be the largest in a string of several volcanoes that once spewed molten ice from deep beneath the moon’s surface.
“We think we have found the strongest case yet for an ice volcano on Titan,” said Randy Kirk, a geophysicist at the US Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona. “What we see is not just a flow like we see in other places, it’s like a volcanic field would be on Earth.”
[cont]
The team cannot be certain if the chain is active, but described the find as the best evidence found so far for a cryovolcano, or ice volcano. Previously, bright spots seen in low-resolution satellite images have been interpreted as volcanic flows and craters. However, once those areas were mapped in 3D, it became obvious they weren’t volcanoes.
“We had noted Sotra Facula as a candidate cryovolcano before,” said Rosaly Lopes at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “But it was only when Randy got the topography done that we realised, wow, this is it.”
Righteous. But what is even more righteous? The concept of a fucking cryovolcano. You can’t just call that shit an ice volcano. That sounds pedestrian! Cryovolcano! A volcano that shoots molten ice. I have a space-dork chubby. This shit ounds like something I absolutely need to cast in an RPG.
NASA Is About To Announce The Existence of Extraterrestrial Life? Tin Foil Hats Alert!
Oh shit! Fresh in time for the holiday season, where we glue bibles to our hearts and proclaim the coming of our Lord, NASA may be about to throw a curve ball into our collective balls. Maybe! It’s always maybe, isn’t it? Fuck me, I know. NASA is gathering an impressive collection of folks to speak at a press conference on Thursday. Who do you ask? Why, none other than an oceanographer, a biologist, and an ecologist! Wait, that doesn’t mean anything to you? Yeah, me neither.
io9 explains:
Blogger Jason Kottke did some inspired sleuthing regarding what Thursday’s press conference might be about. He discovered the expertises of the various people involved include the interaction of geology and life on alien planets (specifically Mars), photosynthesis using arsenic, Saturn’s moon Titan as an early Earth environment, and the chemistry of life, including in places without carbon, water, or oxygen.
Taking that all together and combined with the current blitz of news from NASA’s Cassini probe around Saturn, Kottke guesses the announcement might have something to do with the discovery of arsenic on Titan and, quite possibly, some primitive bacterial form of life using it for photosynthesis.
Well, shit. I thought they were about to inform us of the existence of a species of nine-foot tall blond women with breasts unbothered by gravity, who only want nothing more than to procreate with us. All of us. And give us eternal life. But seriously though, this was be fun as fuck. Some incontrovertible proof of life afar? Even if it’s just some bacteria hanging out? Hey man, we came from fuggin’ muck. This would be dope.
Time to get those Bible Editors out, and talk about the time that God sneezed on Titan!
