| Piú viste - Saturn: the "Ringed Beauty" and His Moons |
Atlas.jpgAtlas (Credits: Dr Marco Faccin and Elisabetta Bonora)185 visitenessun commentoMareKromium
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Rhea-PIA14605-PCF-LXTT-IPF.jpgRhea (Absolute Natural Colors; credits for the additional process. and color.: Elisabetta Bonora and Marco Faccin - Lunar Explorer Italia)182 visiteCaption NASA:"Cassini looks over the heavily Cratered Surface of Rhea during the Spacecraft's Fly-By of this Saturnian moon that occurred on March 10, 2012. This view is centered on Terrain located at about 58° North Latitude and 84° West Longitude.
This image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 27.000 miles (such as about 43.000 Km) from Rhea and at a Sun-Rhea-Spacecraft, or Phase, Angle of 67°. Image scale is 827 feet (252 meters) per pixel".MareKromium
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Saturn-N00063521-04.jpgSaturnian "Shooting Star" and a Shooting Star from Earth179 visiteIl raffronto fra queste immagini ci sembra una prova sufficiente per poter rivendicare, come Lunar Explorer Italia - e diremmo definitivamente - la paternità di questa piccola (ma, secondo noi, splendida e significativa) scoperta: la prima Stella Cadente colta nello spazio di un mondo diverso dalla Terra!
Peccato che la NASA non abbia niente da dire...
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Saturn_and_Moons-N00173684_-83-82-MF-LXTT.jpgTrue Planets (Absolute Natural Colors; credits for the additional process. and color.: Dr Marco Faccin - Lunexit Team)174 visitenessun commentoMareKromium
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Dione-N00199629-33-EB-MF-LXTT-IPF.jpgThe Many faces of Dione (Superdefinition and Natural Colors; credits for the additional process. and color.: Elisabetta Bonora and Marco Faccin/Lunar Explorer Italia/Italian Planetary Foundation)173 visiteThe Icy Surface of the Saturnian moon Dione includes, among other things, some Heavily Cratered Terrain, Moderately Cratered Plains, Lightly Cratered Plains, and several Areas which show the presence of deep and wide Tectonic Fractures (notice that all these Geological Features are well visible in this beautiful picture). The Heavily Cratered Terrain shows a number of Impact Craters which are larger than 100 Km (a little more than 62 miles) in diameter. The Plain Areas, on the other hand, tend to have Impact Craters which are less than 30 Km (such as about 18,6 miles) in diameter. Some of the Plains, however, are more Heavily Cratered than others. Much of the Heavily Cratered Terrain is located on the Trailing Hemisphere of Dione, while the less Cratered Plains are found on the Leading one.
This characteristic of Dione tells us just the opposite of what a few scientists would have expected; Shoemaker and Wolfe, for instance, proposed a Cratering Model for a Tidally Locked Satellite with the highest Cratering Rates on its Leading Hemisphere and the lowest ones on the Trailing Hemisphere. This Model, therefore (if it is one-hundred-percent correct - a fact, this one, that we have no way to prove with absolute cetainty), suggests that during the period of heavy bombardment, Dione was (better yet: could have been) tidally locked to Saturn in an opposite orientation as to the present one. Just because Dione is a relatively small Celestial Body (approx. 1120 Km - such as about 695,5 miles - in diameter), we can assume that an impact causing an approx. 35-Km-diameter Impact Crater should have been strong enough to alter the Course (---> Motion and Orientation) of the moon, as to its Parent Planet. Now, since there are so many Impact Craters on Dione which are way larger than 35 Km (such as about 21,7 miles), we can logically speculate that Dione itself might have changed both its Motion and Orientation a few times during the aforementioned period of heavy bombardment. Eventually, once that the bombardment ended, the moon was finally able to set itself on a definitive and stable Course around Saturn.
As a matter of fact, the Pattern of Cratering and the bright Albedo of its Leading Side suggest that Dione has remained in its current Course for several billion years. Like the Jovian moon Callisto, Dione's Impact Craters lack the high Central Features (---> Peaks/Uplifts) that are often seen, instead, on the Moon and Mercury; this circumstance, in our opinion, is probably due to slumping (---> Mass Wasting) of the weak Icy Crust over Geologic Times, but a final answer to this kind of question, as you can imagine, will probably never given with an absolute certainty. Just out of curiosity, if you pay special attention to the visible portion of the Limb of Dione, as it appears in this highly defined picture, you may realize that its shape is NOT, in fact, perfectly spherical.
This image, which is a combination of 5 (five) Original NASA - CASSINI Spacecraft b/w frames whose ID numbers are N00199629/30/31/32 and 33, has been additionally processed and then colorized in Natural Colors (such as the colors that a perfect human eye - or an Electronic Eye - would have perceived while looking at Dione from Cassini's vantage point) by using an original technique created - and, in time, dramatically improved - by the Lunar Explorer Italia Team. Different colors, as well as different shades of the same color, mean, among others, the existence of different Elements present on the Surface of Dione, each having a different Albedo (---> Reflectivity) and Chemical Composition. MareKromium
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Saturn-W00065995-98-MF-LXTT.jpgHigh-Latitude Superstorm-Cell on Saturn (Superdefinition and Natural Colors; credits for the additional process. and color.: Dr Marco Faccin - Lunexit Team)167 visitenessun commentoMareKromium
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Hyperion-N00174824-N00174908-GB-LXTT.gifTumbling Hyperion (a GIF-Movie by Dr Gianluigi Barca - Lunexit Team)164 visitenessun commentoMareKromium
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Saturnian_Lightnings-02.jpgSaturnian Storm and Lightnings (EDM - credits: NASA/JPL/SSI)162 visiteScientists are tracking the strongest lighting storm ever detected at Saturn. The storm is larger than the continental United States, with electrical activity about 1000 times stronger than the lightning on Earth. Radio outbursts were first detected by NASA's Cassini Spacecraft on Jan. 23. The storm is about 2175 miles wide (approx. 3500 Km). "It's really the only large storm on the whole planet," said Andrew Ingersoll, a member of the Cassini imaging team.
Earth-based amateur astronomers were able view Saturn's dayside with their telescopes when Cassini could not. The amateurs' images of Saturn provided the first visual confirmation of the storm.
The storm is in a Region of the Southern Hemisphere referred to as "Storm Alley" by scientists because of the high level of storm activity observed there. The latitude of the new storm matches that of the "Dragon Storm", which was a powerful emitter of radio noise and was imaged by Cassini in 2004. It may be a reemergence of that storm or a new storm, scientists said.
Sunlight reflected from Saturn's Rings (called "Ringshine") provided illumination needed to allowing the storm and other cloud features to be seen in a new Cassini image.MareKromium
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A - Saturn_s sky before the Streak (2).jpgSaturn's Sky just before the "Streak" (2) - N00008769161 visiteDato che riteniamo di essere stati i primi ad individuare questa notevole Anomalia (la quale, peraltro, difficilmente, verrà riconosciuta come tale dalla NASA o dalle altre Agenzie Spaziali coinvolte nel Progetto Cassini/Huygens) riteniamo giusto rivendicare il nostro buon diritto di Scopritori e, quindi, la battezziamo con il nome di "Saturn-Cass/Huy-PCF-1-05/08/2004-Anomaly".
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Saturn_and_Friends-EB-MF-LXTT.jpgSaturn and some "Friends" (Natural Colors; credits for the additional process. and color.: Elisabetta Bonora and Marco Faccin - Lunexit Team)160 visitenessun commentoMareKromium
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AA - Saturn_s sky right after the Streak.jpgSaturn's Sky right after the "Streak" - N00008772157 visite...(individuato nel Cielo di Marte) e del quale è stata effettuata una ripresa da parte della Sonda Spirit (si veda al riguardo l'immagine, proposta nella Sezione dedicata alle "Mars Spirit Anomalies"). In quel frangente la NASA disse che si trattava della Sonda Viking 2 (o di qualche altra vecchia Sonda Americana o Sovietica) che stava precipitando, dopo oltre vent'anni di servizio, incendiandosi nell'atmosfera di Marte e dunque configurandosi e brillando come un normale bolide o "stella cadente".
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The_Rings-PIA12820.gifTilting Saturn's Rings (a Computer Animation by NASA/JPL/Cornell)157 visiteCaption NASA:"This animated graphic shows in a series of three images how Saturn's Rings, after they became tilted relative to Saturn's Equatorial Plane, would have transformed into a Corrugated Ring.
Images taken after Saturn's August 2009 equinox from NASA's Cassini Spacecraft revealed alternating light and dark bands extending from Saturn's D-Ring, completely across the C-Rg, and right up to the inner B-Rg Ege. These brightness variations are almost certainly caused by the changing slopes in the rippled Rng-Plane, much like the corrugations of a tin roof.
This series of images shows how such a vertical corrugation can be produced from an initially inclined ring by the natural tendency for inclined orbits to wobble systematically and slowly at different rates, depending on their distance from Saturn. The top image shows a simple inclined ring (the central planet is omitted for clarity), while the lower two images show the same ring at two later times, where the ring particles' wobbling orbits have sheared this inclined sheet into an increasingly tightly-wound spiral corrugation.
Cassini images show the corrugation extends for about 19.000 Km (11.799 miles). Based on detailed studies of this structure, scientists conclude that a broad swath of the Rings became suddenly tilted in the early 1980s, likely because Cometary Debris crashed into them.
The corrugation's radial extent implies that the impacting material was a dispersed cloud of debris instead of a single object. The corrugation's amplitude of about 2 to 20 meters (7 to 60 feet) indicates that the debris' total mass was around 1 Trillion Kg (or 1 Billion Metric Tons)".
MareKromium
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