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smichy
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« on: March 12, 2003, 05:39:00 PM » |
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I can barely contain myself! Those rings and the moons and it's such a gigantic probe - I've got really high hopes for this!!! 2004 arrival? Bring it on!   Steve M
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skyjim
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« Reply #1 on: March 12, 2003, 06:33:00 PM » |
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Absolutely! It's probably just that counting the days gets old!
Jim
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Aetius1
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« Reply #2 on: March 12, 2003, 10:16:00 PM » |
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I'm INCREDIBLY excited myself! The MER Rovers making planetfall on Mars, Cassini finally reaching Saturn, other stuff... 2004 is gonna be a banner year for us space cadets.  
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Remcook
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« Reply #3 on: March 13, 2003, 03:43:00 AM » |
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Can you imagine the images send from Huygens as it plunges through the clouds of Titan? *sigh* PLus the radar images from Cassini. Together they will unravel a whole new planet (well...moon, but who cares?).
And the MERs!! Racing over the rusty martian surface.
And Beagle! shooting its mole under some cool rock.
Rejoice!
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Aetius1
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« Reply #4 on: March 13, 2003, 05:39:00 AM » |
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I was in a hurry to type my previous post...I never meant to leave out Huygens, Mars Express, or Beagle! :b  :b It's going to be like Christmas all year for us, space-wise. Let's hope everything goes well.
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Jacaranda3739
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« Reply #5 on: March 13, 2003, 06:47:00 PM » |
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I haven't been keeping up with the Cassini project, you say it has radar imaging? I think it would be very fasinating to see what the solid mass inside of a gas giant will look like. They did the same type of imaging on Venus years ago which showed it to be activly volcanic and thus explained why it was in such a high degree of the green house effect. Any guesses on what the solid mass of Saturn will look like?
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Aetius1
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« Reply #6 on: March 13, 2003, 08:33:00 PM » |
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I could be wrong, but I think that Cassini radar is only going to be used on Titan. The radar drains a lot of electricity, and I don't think Cassini is in the right orbit to map more than a fraction of its surface.
Still AWESOME!
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Qazaq2001
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« Reply #7 on: March 13, 2003, 11:51:00 PM » |
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Jacaranda, Saturn and the other gas giant planets do NOT have a solid surface beneath their clouds, so the idea of radar mapping them would be moot, and besides Cassini isn't going to radar map Saturn itself anyway. Q8)  
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Remcook
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« Reply #8 on: March 14, 2003, 02:37:00 AM » |
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Cassini will map Titan entirely, be it with low resolution. The small percentage comes from the high-resolution mapping. It can map about 1% of the surface during one flyby. And there are about 40 Flybys planned ( saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/opera...-tour.cfm) so we should get a pretty good map of Titan   cassini RADAR
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Jacaranda3739
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« Reply #9 on: March 15, 2003, 10:10:00 PM » |
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Q, I have to disagree with you on that. I believe that although saturn is a gas giant, that something had to have caused the gravitational field for the gas to form around. It may be tiny or it may lay just benieth the surface. But I believe that there is more to it than just gas. Or perhaps the gas compressed into heavier elements and formed a solid or semi solid mass? Consider how a rain drop forms by condensing on a spec of dust. I believe that there has to be something there for saturn to have formed around.
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Remcook
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« Reply #10 on: March 16, 2003, 04:50:00 AM » |
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Remcook
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« Reply #11 on: March 16, 2003, 05:03:00 AM » |
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skyjim
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« Reply #12 on: March 16, 2003, 05:08:00 PM » |
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I attended a talk given last night to a pitifully small audience of astronomy club members by Dr. Linda Spilker, Cassini Deputy Project Scientist and a member of the Cassini Composite Infrared Team. Her topic was the dynamics of Saturn's ring system and the science Cassini will allow to help us understand this set of very complex and FASCINATING structures. I was previously unaware of the slightly lopsided nature of the outer portion of the B ring and the apparently conclusive evidence that the average thickness of the rings is closer to 100 meters than the previous 1 kilometer estimates I had been aware of. Lots of neat images, including density waves piled up inside one of the rings. More than I could really assimilate in a couple of hours, and I'm hoping to get my hands on some of the Powerpoint images that Dr. Spilker used last night.  (JPL image) I can't WAIT for orbit insertion! Jim
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skyjim
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« Reply #13 on: March 16, 2003, 05:17:00 PM » |
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Hey Rem...
Could you possibly reduce the size of that B&W image? It's making it a real pain to read these posts...
Jim
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Jacaranda3739
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« Reply #14 on: March 16, 2003, 06:25:00 PM » |
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Thanks Rem, thats exactly what I meant.
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