Pioneer 11's 'near miss' at Saturn |
Pioneer 11's 'near miss' at Saturn |
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Member ![]() ![]() ![]() Group: Members Posts: 117 Joined: 7-December 06 From: Sheffield UK Member No.: 1462 ![]() |
A couple of websites state that Pioneer 11 discovered a new moon of Saturn during its 1979 flyby and nearly collided with it.
http://www.uwgb.edu/DutchS/CosmosNotes/voyagr00.htm The website says Pioneer 11 missed the previously unknown moon by only a few hundred km. http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/planets/satslid.htm Apparently the spacecraft inferred the moon's existance by the disturbances it created in Saturn's magnetic field. Is this right? Did Pioneer 11 nearly end its mission in an unforseen Deep Impact style crash? -------------------- It's a funny old world - A man's lucky if he gets out of it alive. - W.C. Fields.
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#2
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Solar System Cartographer ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() Group: Members Posts: 10197 Joined: 5-April 05 From: Canada Member No.: 227 ![]() |
The problem with 'Janus' as seen in 1966 was that the various observations of this tiny object at the edge of the rings could not be fitted to a good orbit. Now we know that this was caused by having observations of two objects in essentially the same orbit, but that unexpected and unprecedented situation was not considered. As a reliable orbit could not be defined the situation remained unclear until the spacecraft data began to come in. The near-ring area could not be seen after ring-plane crossing because of glare, so there were no observations between 1966 and 1979. In retrospect, Dollfus observed both Janus and Epimetheus.
Phil -------------------- ... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.
Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke Maps for download (free PD: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Cartography.pdf NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain) |
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