Saturn in View (APOD 2009 March 4)

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http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap090304.html

That OTHER "planetary nebula" in Aquarius:

Explanation: The layers of the Saturn Nebula give a complex picture of how this planetary nebula was created. The above picture, taken in April 1996 and released last week, allows a better understanding of the mysterious process that transformed a low-mass star into a white dwarf star. A computer model indicates that the central star of NGC 7009 first expelled the green gas that now appears barrel shaped. This green gas now confines stellar winds flowing from the central star, creating a jet which forms the ansae that appear in red at the tips. Much remains unknown, including why the gas has not become turbulent.

The Saturn Nebula (also known as NGC 7009) is a planetary nebula in the Aquarius constellation. It was discovered by William Herschel on September 7, 1782 using a telescope of his own design in the garden at his home in Datchet England and was one of his earliest discoveries in his sky survey. The nebula was originally a low-mass star that transformed into a rather bright white dwarf star, magnitude 11.5. The Saturn Nebula gets its name from its superficial resemblance to the planet Saturn with its rings nearly edge-on to the observer. It was so named by Lord Rosse in the 1840s, when telescopes had improved to the point that its Saturn-like shape could be discerned. William Henry Smyth said that the Saturn Nebula is one of Struve's 9 "Rare Celestial Objects."

The distance to the Saturn nebula is not known very well because there are no reference stars in its neighborhood that have been detected and could be used to accurately gauge its distance. Therefore, any distance is somewhat suspect. Hynes estimates it to be 2,400 light-years distance from earth. In 1963, O'Dell estimated the distance to be 3,900 light-years.

http://www.astrosurf.com/antilhue/ngc7009.htm
http://www.noao.edu/jacoby/saturn_nebula.html

[bystander]

Newfound Moon May Be Source of Outer Saturn Ring
NASA Mission News - Cassini - 2009 March 03

• NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found within Saturn's G ring an embedded moonlet that appears as a faint, moving pinprick of light. Scientists believe it is a main source of the G ring and its single ring arc.

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<<What would S/2008 S1 look like up close? I don't know, but I can hazard some guesses. It's roughly the size of Itokawa, but I would think that it wouldn't look anything like Itokawa's bouldery and gravelly surface. S/2008 S1 orbits within an arc of dust of all sizes. The small moons of Saturn that orbit close to and within the rings that Cassini has photographed -- Atlas, for instance, or Pandora -- have odd football (American football, that is, or rugby ball, if you prefer) or saucer shapes, formed from the slow accretion and sliding of dust around their surfaces. I'd guess S/2008 S1 would look like that. Try to land on it, and your every motion would kick up puffs and clouds of dust, flying away on ballistic trajectories, to orbit Saturn in the "sky" around the little world. Weird.>>

[aristarchusinexile]

That is one HOT cacoon!