cwnl:
Big Beautiful Saturn
Composition Credit: Mattias Malmer, Image Data: Cassini Imaging Team
118
cwnl:
Titan Surmised
In the above depiction, orange hydrocarbons color a landscape covered with lakes and peaks of frozen methane and ammonia. For illustration purposes, the Huygens probe is drawn parachuting down with an oversized Cassini spacecraft orbiting above.
Illustration Credit & Copyright: Craig Attebery, ESA, NASA
Tychonic System
In 1588, Tycho Brahe first outlines his “Tychonic system” idea of the structure of the solar system. The Tychonic system was a hybrid, sharing both the basic idea of the geocentric system of Ptolemy, and the heliocentric idea of Nicholas Copernicus. In his De mundi aethorei recentioribus phaenomenis, Brahe’s proposal, retaining Aristotelian physics, kept the the Sun and Moon revolving about Earth in the center of the universe and, at a great distance, the shell of the fixed stars was centered on the Earth. But like Copernicus, he agreed that Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn revolved about the Sun. Thus he could explain the motions of the heavens without “crystal spheres” carrying the planets through complex Ptolemaic epicycles.
New Study Says Large Regions of Mars Could Sustain Life
—
The question of whether present-day Mars could be habitable, and to what extent, has been the focus of long-running and intense debates. The surface, comparable to the dry valleys of Antarctica and the Atacama desert on Earth, is harsh, with well-below freezing temperatures most of the time (at an average of minus 63 degrees Celsius or minus 81 Fahrenheit), extreme dryness and a very thin atmosphere offering little protection from the Sun’s ultraviolet radiation. Most scientists would agree that the best place that any organisms could hope to survive and flourish would be underground. Now, a new study says that scenario is not only correct, but that large regions of Mars’ subsurface could be even more sustainable for life than previously thought.
Scientists from the Australian National University modeled conditions on Mars on a global scale and found that large regions could be capable of sustaining life – three percent of the planet actually, albeit mostly underground. By comparison, just one percent of Earth’s volume, from the central core to the upper atmosphere, is inhabited by some kind of life. They compared pressure and temperature conditions on Earth to those of Mars to come up with the surprising results.
The paper is currently available for free here.
(via universetoday)
cwnl:
Thin Rings Around Polarized Saturn
How thin are the rings of Saturn?
Brightness measurements from different angles have shown Saturn’s rings to be about one kilometer thick, making them many times thinner, in relative proportion, than a razor blade. This thinness sometimes appears in dramatic fashion during an image taken nearly along the ring plane. Additional guest appearance by Enceladus.
cwnl:
Rain Showers on Titan
Copyright: David A. Hardy
cwnl:
Saturn’s Ancient Rings
Cassini’s Phoebe flyby
A dark outer moon of Saturn reveals its icy nature.I remember the first photos of Phoebe, when Cassini arrived in the Saturn system.
On December 15th, Comet Lovejoy passed within 140 000 kilometers of the surface of the sun. Much of the comet evaporated, but the frozen nucleus of the comet survived and returned to deep space.
cwnl:
Full Rotation of Jupiter
Jupiter observed with the 1 meter Telescope at the Pic du Midi observatory, and a Basler Scout Camera.
Copyright & Credit: S2P/IMCCE/OPM/JL Dauvergne/Elie Rousset/Eric Meza/Philippe Tosi/François Colas/Jean Pajus/Xavi Nogués/Emil Kraaikamp
