June 12 2007 Icy Moons (rev 46) |
June 12 2007 Icy Moons (rev 46) |
Jun 6 2007, 07:35 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1887 Joined: 20-November 04 From: Iowa Member No.: 110 |
Rev 46 description available at CICLOPS
http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=3245 Some highlights: Cassini will observe Mimas, the innermost of the mid-sized icy satellites of Saturn June 12, Cassini makes one of its closest passes of the small, inner satellite Atlas, at a distance of only 38,000 km (24,000 mi). With an average diameter of only 31 km (19 mi), Atlas is one of the smallest moons of Saturn. Atlas will only appear to be 120 pixels across (at the equator). However, these images may still provide important clues about the formation of one of the most distinguishing aspects of the tiny satellite: its equatorial bulge. The bulge is thought to have been created by material from Saturn’s A ring being deposited preferentially along the equator of the satellite. A number of observations are dedicated to observing some of Saturn's small moons, in order to refine scientists' estimates of their orbital paths. These sequences include observations of some of Saturn's outer satellites, such as Paaliaq, Hati, and S/2004 S13 I've seen a few of these small outer moons listed recently on the raw image page. They search tool only shows them from the last few orbits. Is this something new they are doing or have they been previously listed as Sky? |
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Jun 14 2007, 06:14 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 655 Joined: 22-January 06 Member No.: 655 |
I reckon that Pan and Daphnis may look pretty similar in close-up, with Pan (based on far-out images so far) being an even more extreme case than Atlas with the whole snow-girdle thing.
I'm going to show my ignorance here, but presumably Atlas is not tidally-locked to Saturn, leading to roughly equal accretion of ring particles around the equator, rather than them piling-up preferentially on the leading hemisphere. If not tidally locked, then it lends wait to the theory of the rings (and embedded moons) being the result of the disruption of a body that wandered too close to Saturn, and that the rings themselves are a (cosmologically) fleeting phenomenon that we're very privileged to see. |
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