Rosetta flyby of Asteroid Steins, 5th September 2008 Options

[elakdawalla]

I've seen it on one website (and now can't remember which one) but I do remember noticing that only Rita Schultz pronounced it that way on the ESA press panel.

--Emily

[David]

4) Is everyone pronouncing it "SHTINES" like they should? There's a hacek over that "S"!

Unfortunately, that's wrong too. It's not a German name, it's a Latvian one (although I suppose its origin is ultimately German). In Latvian, ei = (approximately) the ei in eight. The final s should be voiceless too. So it should be "shtains" (not "shtainz", but with the same final consonants as in "rinse" or "glance") -- it sort of rhymes with "saints", if you muddle away the t. It's named for the Latvian astronomer Kārlis Šteins.

[elakdawalla]

Huh. Anybody out there disagree with this, or is it the final answer? I'm planning on talking about Shtainss in my Wednesday Ustream show, and I'd like to make an honest attempt to get it right

--Emily

[JRehling]

I got suckered in by the hacek -- I have a passing familiarity with Czech, but not Latvian.

Czech writes every word phonetically, and since German pronounces every S before a "t" as /sh/, words that are borrowed from German (like "Stein", which means "stone"), are written with the s+hacek (not sure if I type it here if everyone will see it that way).

Now here's ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlis_Steins ) the page on the astronomer it's named after and the Cyrillic indicates that it is pronounced "SHTINES", but I'll take David's word for it on the Latvian. I would guess that in the USSR, Russian names trumped other languages' pronunciations, but that was then and this is now.

It sort of seems like this name probably hasn't been spoken aloud that often over the years, which makes the notion of proper pronunciation almost degenerate. Rita Schultz is German, and moreover has a last name starting with that same sound, so I'm not surprised that she'd pronounce it according to its German origin.

[ElkGroveDan]

I'm planning on talking about Shtainss in my Wednesday Ustream show, and I'd like to make an honest attempt to get it right

If you'd rather not, I know of a great new household product guaranteed to get the "Shtainss" out.

[Guest_jumpjack_*]

Another hypotesys: could Sun have acted on the asteroid like on a comet, in case it contained some material which, due to high temperature, exploded, causing the crater?!?


This would explain why the asteroid didn't get destroyed by an impact which created a crater large 40% of its size! (consider very low gravity of such a small body).

It looks like my hypothesis is actually possible!

http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0809...-asteroids.html

Could Rosetta instruments detect Steins surface temperature?

[Guest_jumpjack_*]

Hi Emily,

A friend of mine has done a similar job with the irregular moons of the Solar System. The derivative is copyright Andrzej Karon 2008:

Excess quoting removed - Admin

Really nice image; it would be interesting to see how Pluto appears in this scale, although it's not a moon.

I think I'll try to set up a single image collecting all bodies smaller than 6000 km...

[mps]

Now here's ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karlis_Steins ) the page on the astronomer it's named after and the Cyrillic indicates that it is pronounced "SHTINES",

I think the Cyrillic actually supports David's version.

[ugordan]

I think the Cyrillic actually supports David's version.

I concur.

[cotopaxi]

Again, this is my point. More overhead illumination makes the other craters not stand out so well. For what it's worth, the images widely distributed are magnified so they are blurred and hide the actual pixel scale and make you think small details are not there (when they're actually below resolving power). Here's the actual pixel scale view, magnified 3x using the nearest-neighbor algorithm in order not to add new "details" into the image.


I'm seeing several craters of similar size across the face, but they don't poke the eye because they're not on the terminator. The chain craters you speak of do absolutely not appear of the same size to me, the lower 3 ones appear much bigger than the top 4. Yet, the top 4 have a companion off to the left side with also a hint of a fifth crater almost completely shadowed. As far as I'm concerned this case is closed.

EDIT: Mike, I didn't mean you, I meant the rest of the folks who believe this feature isn't accidental.

I am afraid I am starting to sound like a broken record, so I promise this is my last post on the subject. I understand that the craters are most obvious at the terminator, and yes, we see 20 or so craters on the surface. The point is, the
alignment of 7 of them is too good to be an OBVIOUS change alignment. On Ganymed or Callisto there are lots of craters the same size as the accepted crater chains. The criterion is the fractional surface coverage, and that is low.
I don't say it cannot be a chance alignment, I am only objecting against the "case being closed".

[3488]

It will be interesting to see the results of the gravity data (slight deflection of Rosetta), the NAC images prior to safing & the multispectral data.

An encounter montage I've made of the Asteroid 2867 Šteins.

I know, not as good as many if not all of the contributions on this thread, but I do try.

Using screen dumps from the ESA animation. Not raw screen dumps as I have enlarged each one by 350% & have enhanced the contrast slightly, all equally.


Andrew Brown.

[tedstryk]

Unfortunately, that's wrong too. It's not a German name, it's a Latvian one (although I suppose its origin is ultimately German). In Latvian, ei = (approximately) the ei in eight. The final s should be voiceless too. So it should be "shtains" (not "shtainz", but with the same final consonants as in "rinse" or "glance") -- it sort of rhymes with "saints", if you muddle away the t. It's named for the Latvian astronomer Kārlis Šteins.

Where did you find that information (I am not being sarcastic, but I keep coming up empty when I try to find background information on Stein's discoverer)?

[Juramike]

I don't say it cannot be a chance alignment, I am only objecting against the "case being closed".

Without more extensive imaging or a deeper peer-reviewed analysis, I wouldn't feel comfortable "closing the case" either way.

[Personally, I prefer the term "resting a case" rather than "case closed" - when new information pops up, anything/everything can be re-evaluated.]

I would be very interested to know if other crater chains have been observed on other asteroids. Or is the "tentative observed alignment of circular features" (safest statement I could come up with) on Steins a unique case?

-Mike

[jamescanvin]

Where did you find that information (I am not being sarcastic, but I keep coming up empty when I try to find background information on Stein's discoverer)?

I haven't dug up the references but there are two listed in the Wikipedia entry for Kārlis Šteins the Latvian astronomer, linking him to 2867 Šteins.

[JRehling]

I also agree that the Cyrillic backs up just what David said. I misread a detail in his post.