Saturn animation

It has been awhile since I posted here and I apologize for that. Life interrupts a good deal of my best intentions - as you will find out as you grow up and grow older Junior. I just hope that your interest in the night sky will not wane in the process. Building on what you know at age twelve is a lot easier than trying to build on your knowledge at age 52 - not impossible just harder.

Here is a link to a great Saturn animation I found that might interest you. It was compiled over a six year period.

What We Take for Granted

You have grown up with the internet, making this discussion of the night sky over Bend, your hometown possible from three hours drive away. And you are growing up in a time when what should seem fantastic, just because it was just a few short years ago for people like your Dad and even more so for me, seems almost ordinary.

Today, because I know your night sky will have one too many clouds in it, we will talk about a special space craft visiting place I know I'll never visit - but you might someday! Cassini spacecraft entered orbit around Saturn to begin the first in-depth, up-close study of the ringed planet and its domain (moons and rings and such). It has been in this orbit for over four years and now is doing some additional sightseeing.

This part of the extended mission called the Cassini Equinox Mission.

"We're looking at a string of remarkable discoveries -- about Saturn's magnificent rings, its amazing moons, its dynamic magnetosphere (how it acts like a giant magnet holding the rings and the moons where they are) and about Titan's surface and atmosphere," says Dr. Linda Spilker, deputy project scientist. Can you imagine a job where you get to do this everyday?

Dr Spilker went on to say, "Some of the mission highlights so far include discovering that Titan has Earth-like processes and that the small moon Enceladus (which Cassini flew past at only thirty miles from the surface)has a hot-spot at its southern pole, jets on the surface that spew out ice crystals and evidence of liquid water beneath its surface."

Cassini's observations of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, have given scientists a glimpse of what Earth might have been like before life evolved. They now believe Titan possesses many parallels to Earth, including lakes, rivers, channels, dunes, rain, snow, clouds, mountains and possibly volcanoes.

The spray of icy particles from the surface jets collectively forms a towering plume three times taller than the width of Enceladus. It is now thought that the plume feeds particles into Saturn's most expansive ring, the E ring. Already in the extended mission, the spacecraft has come as close as 25 kilometers (15 miles) from the moon's surface.

The extraordinary results from the Cassini spacecraft and the European Space Agency's Huygens probe, which plunged through Titan's dense, smoggy atmosphere to its surface, have generated hundreds of scientific articles and been the subject of special issues of the world’s most important scientific journals.

This picture of Saturn was taken on April 27, 2009 and received on Earth April 28th, 2009. The camera was pointing toward SATURN at approximately 987,316 kilometers away.

The first four years of the Cassini-Huygens saga brought a new dimension of understanding of the complex and diverse Saturn system. The two year Cassini Equinox Mission is expected to be just as exciting. During the extended mission the spacecraft will make 60 additional orbits of Saturn, including 26 flybys of Titan, seven of Enceladus, and one each of Dione, Rhea and Helene. Investigations of Saturn's rings, the planet itself and new places within Saturn's magnetosphere await.

Why is it called Cassini?

Saturn's March show

Note from Papa to Andre: This is a way to give you all of the information any young skywatcher should need to understand what he sees in the night sky. I'll include a weather forecast with each post, some directions and some background on the subject.

Last week, I sent your Mom an email about looking for Saturn in the early evening sky to the east of you. In it I told you about the first astronomer to see the rings around the planet. Only his telescope was so primitive - he made it himself even grinding the glass lens - that his view of the distant planet (746 million miles from earth) was rather crude.

It was so crude that Galileo assumed they were jug handles. In fact, this picture was taken using a replica of what Galileo saw. We now know that they are rings. It was two years before he was able to find the planet again and he was astonished that the rings had disappeared. Do you know why?

The next time Galileo was able to see the planet the tilt, or angle the planet was pointed at the astronomer had changed and the rings where nothing more than a straight line across the planet.

It is too bad that the weather in Bend will not be good for looking at this event but you might be able to catch it in the morning on the western horizon - perhaps underneath the clouds or in between snow showers.

Here is some other stuff about Saturn that you may not have known. It has sixty moons and is really cold. Try and imagine 170 degrees below zero cold! It also takes twenty nine and half years to get around the sun. If you were born on Saturn, you would only be a couple of months old!

Next up: some stuff you can look forward to when the clouds go away.