Printable Version of Topic

Posted by: Liss Jul 23 2009, 07:15 PM

It is known that Pioneer 11 imaged 1979 S1 and barely impacted 1979 S2, both being the same oblect identified with 1980 S3 and now known as Epimetheus.
Then in October 1980 Collins and Carlson found 1980 S26 and 1980 S27 in the movie of Saturn rings made by Voyager 1 -- these are Pandora and Prometheus -- and in November Terrile found 1980 S28, now known as Atlas.
Voyager 2 would not found a new satellite of Saturn immediately in flyby. But on 01 Feb 1982 JPL announced ( http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/80s/release_1982_0985.html ) the discovery by Synnott of four and maybe even six new satellites apart from 17 known by then. But having read the release, I understood that none of the six was confirmed, maybe with the exception of one:

Of course one should substitute behind for ahead as it was Dione-B aka Helene, the leading Trojan satellite in the Dione orbit, that was discovered in 1980. But the question remains if Synnott indeed found in 1982 the trailing Trojan od Dione, re-discovered by the Cassini team in 2004 and now known as Polydeuces.

I still wonder what a treasure would be a full set of NASA releases since 1958 online. Unfortunately I know only of JSC releases before 1988 put online and of limited number from NASA HQ and JPL.

Posted by: Liss Jul 23 2009, 08:07 PM

Well, I now understand that the 1981 S8 satellite described by Synnott in IAUC 3656 was indeed in the vicinity of Helene. So none of the six were confirmed.
Yet Showalter found Pan in 1990 and Synnott found Pallene in 1995 in the archive Voyager data.

Posted by: gwiz Jul 24 2009, 03:12 PM

There's at least a partial collection here:
https://mira.hq.nasa.gov/history/

Posted by: Liss Jul 25 2009, 02:21 PM

I know, a great resource, but the set is indeed partial, and, as of today, I cannot even access the Press Releases URL on the site.