Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

bradl

macrumors 603
Original poster
Jun 16, 2008
5,972
17,484
I'm not sure what the hell it is, but dammit all if it isn't making me hungry!

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...may-be-tiny-but-it-sure-looks-like-a-mouthful

This Moon Of Saturn May Be Tiny, But It Sure Looks Like A Mouthful
March 10, 20174:54 PM ET
by Colin Dwyer

Oh sure, the Cassini spacecraft has been orbiting Saturn since 2004, capturing breathtaking images of the beringed gas giant and illuminating a once-obscure pocket of our solar system for the sake of scientific inquiry.

But — you're surely asking — what good is all that if the craft hasn't taken any quality photographs of space ravioli?

Well, on Thursday, Cassini finally sent back what armchair astronomers are saying is the world's definitive depiction of space ravioli — or, depending on whom you ask, a space walnut ... or a space empanada.

Or, if you insist on getting technical: The image sent back Thursday depicts Saturn's tiny moon Pan, a distinctively ridged satellite that's so close to the planet, it completes a full orbit roughly every 14 hours. The moon, which has a diameter of just about 20 miles, follows in the footsteps of its ancient Greek namesake by acting as a shepherd to the material that makes up Saturn's rings, clearing an empty space in their midst known as the Encke Gap.

Still, whatever its other qualities, Pan's curious shape is tough to ignore because it bears more than a passing resemblance to a sight you may find much closer to home — or rather, in your home on your dinner table.

posited in Science magazine in 2007, Pan and another of Saturn's moons earned their equatorial ridges from the accumulation of ring particles, picked up over time as the moons orbit.

The authors put it this way: "We propose that Pan and Atlas ridges are kilometers-thick 'ring-particle piles' formed after the satellites themselves and after the flattening of the rings but before the complete depletion of ring material from their surroundings."

It's safe to say the images released Thursday are some of the clearest we've ever seen of Pan.

"I saw this picture, and I thought, that's an artist's conception," Carolyn C. Porco, leader of Cassini's imaging team and visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, tells the New York Times. "Then I realized it was real."

And it might very well be among the last images sent by Cassini, a robotic spacecraft spearheaded jointly by NASA, the European Space Agency and Italy's space agency.

After more than a decade circling Saturn, the craft has just a few months left before it commences what NASA calls the Grand Finale, a "daring set of orbits" that will end with Cassini plunging past Saturn to collect information on the planet's gravitational fields, atmosphere and ring mass.

Yet above and beyond the incalculable value it has offered scientists, Cassini's recent flyby has also offered journalists a humbler — though no less joyous — kind of gift: the chance to make a whole lot of pasta jokes.

2_n1867602424_1_custom-7206625a4a7438b839fb5bb343a485f1f8943e9a-s800-c85.jpg




After this, anybody up for Italian tonight? :D

BL.
 
Cassini now in Grand Finale stage:

The spacecraft's handlers had been calling this upcoming period "the proximal orbits" because Cassini will be so close to the planet, but they felt this apellation lacked pizzazz. So in April, they asked the public to vote for names provided by mission team members or suggest monikers of their own.

More than 2,000 people took part, NASA officials said. The team took the public's input into account, then decided to go with the "Cassini Grand Finale."

"We chose a name for this mission phase that would reflect the exciting journey ahead while acknowledging that it's a big finish for what has been a truly great show," Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said in a statement.

Cassini launched toward Saturn in October 1997 and arrived in orbit around the ringed planet 10 years ago yesterday (June 30). The $3.2 billion mission — a collaboration involving NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency — also dropped a lander named Huygens onto Saturn's huge moon Titan in January 2005.​

Sorry to see her go.

Next up: Uranus and Neptune twin mission?
 
annotated_earth-moon_from_saturn_1920x1080.jpg


Earth as seen by Cassini.

Incredible!

Absolutely fantastic, and what an exquisite - and downright beautiful - image. Awesome. Thanks fro sharing.


Spectacular but sad. An amazing mission.

They are predicting final loss of contact at 4:55 am PDT Thursday morning, September 15, 2017.

https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/saturn-tour/where-is-cassini-now/

Farewell, Cassini - what a superlative programme, voyage and mission.
 

Cassini Grand Finale Video



At around 7:31 AM eastern time, the Cassini-Huygensspacecraft disintegrated and plunged into Saturn, becoming the only man-made object ever to touch our solar system's second largest planet. "The signal from the spacecraft is gone and within the next 45 seconds, so will be the spacecraft," said NASA JPL Cassini program manager Earl Maize. "This has been an incredible mission, an incredible spacecraft, and you're all an incredible team."


In a fitting end to the tough spacecraft, which outlasted its projected mission lifespan by over nine years, Cassini kept sending science data back to Earth a full 30 seconds longer than expected. It spent that precious half-minute sampling molecules in the planet's atmosphere. "Those last few seconds were our first taste of the atmosphere of Saturn," JPL Director Mike Watkins said. "Who knows how many PhD theses are in that data?"

The spacecraft didn't quite die when it hit Saturn, as a tiny trace of it -- its final radio signals -- reached Earth 83 minutes later. It was a billion miles aways when it crashed on Saturn, a gas giant 764 times larger than Earth by volume. Despite minimal risks, NASA, JPL and its partners crashed and burned it on Saturn to ensure that any stray microbes wouldn't get to Titan and other moons, which hold the potential to support life.

During its mission, Cassini made numerous scientific discoveries and significantly changed the way we think about our solar system. Some of the highlights include finding vertical structures on Saturn's rings, landing the Huygens probe on Titan, photographing Titan's surprisingly Earth-like frozen landscape, finding saline flats that show Titan could support life and finding water on the tiny moon Enceladus

link
 

Cassini Grand Finale Video



At around 7:31 AM eastern time, the Cassini-Huygensspacecraft disintegrated and plunged into Saturn, becoming the only man-made object ever to touch our solar system's second largest planet. "The signal from the spacecraft is gone and within the next 45 seconds, so will be the spacecraft," said NASA JPL Cassini program manager Earl Maize. "This has been an incredible mission, an incredible spacecraft, and you're all an incredible team."


In a fitting end to the tough spacecraft, which outlasted its projected mission lifespan by over nine years, Cassini kept sending science data back to Earth a full 30 seconds longer than expected. It spent that precious half-minute sampling molecules in the planet's atmosphere. "Those last few seconds were our first taste of the atmosphere of Saturn," JPL Director Mike Watkins said. "Who knows how many PhD theses are in that data?"

The spacecraft didn't quite die when it hit Saturn, as a tiny trace of it -- its final radio signals -- reached Earth 83 minutes later. It was a billion miles aways when it crashed on Saturn, a gas giant 764 times larger than Earth by volume. Despite minimal risks, NASA, JPL and its partners crashed and burned it on Saturn to ensure that any stray microbes wouldn't get to Titan and other moons, which hold the potential to support life.

During its mission, Cassini made numerous scientific discoveries and significantly changed the way we think about our solar system. Some of the highlights include finding vertical structures on Saturn's rings, landing the Huygens probe on Titan, photographing Titan's surprisingly Earth-like frozen landscape, finding saline flats that show Titan could support life and finding water on the tiny moon Enceladus

link

Fantastic.

Great post and thanks for sharing.

What an amazing and extraordinary mission.
 
Quote from OP Bradl's insert:

***Still, whatever its other qualities, Pan's curious shape is tough to ignore because it bears more than a passing resemblance to a sight you may find much closer to home — or rather, in your home on your dinner table.

posited in Science magazine in 2007, Pan and another of Saturn's moons earned their equatorial ridges from the accumulation of ring particles, picked up over time as the moons orbit.

The authors put it this way: "We propose that Pan and Atlas ridges are kilometers-thick 'ring-particle piles' formed after the satellites themselves and after the flattening of the rings but before the complete depletion of ring material from their surroundings."

It's safe to say the images released Thursday are some of the clearest we've ever seen of Pan.

"I saw this picture, and I thought, that's an artist's conception," Carolyn C. Porco, leader of Cassini's imaging team and visiting scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, tells the New York Times. "Then I realized it was real."
***

Joking aside, hard not to look at this and think …. that's so weird …. maybe it's been sculpted?? Clearly a ridiculous idea, eh?

I quite like the theory on how it may have been formed. Anybody got pictures of the other examples mentioned showing extreme 'ridges' appearing like this, even partially formed, that suggests this proposed mechanism of it's creation isn't a 'one off'?

Footnote: No worries, got them here:

Pan and Atlas
 
Last edited:
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.