Explanation: Take a picture of Saturn in the sky tonight. You could capture a view like this one. Recorded just last month looking toward the south, planet Earth and ruins of the ancient temple of Athena at Assos, Turkey are in the foreground. The Moon rises at the far left of the frame and Saturn is the bright "star" at the upper right, near Virgo's alpha star Spica (picture with labels). If you do take a picture of Saturn or wave at Saturn and take a picture, you can share it online and submit it to the Saturn Mosaic Project. Why take a picture tonight? Because the Cassini spacecraft will be orbiting Saturn and taking a picture of you.
Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be
alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk. — Garrison Keillor
1) Cassini's cameras will be trained on Earth during a 15 minute interval that begins on July 19 at 5:27 p.m. EDT.
2) NASA's Mercury-orbiting MESSENGER spacecraft will capture images of Earth on July 19 and 20.
The images will be taken at 7:49 a.m., 8:38 a.m. and 9:41 a.m. EDT on both days
I think that if you wave at Saturn tonight starting at 5:27 (E) you will have missed the boat by approx 80 minutes ... which is the amount of time it takes light to get to Saturn at a distance of 900,000,000 miles. Am I right ? JL-Virginia
I expect they were thoughtful enough to have already factored the distance. But that is not a definitive answer. I’m going with my gut as “already factored” because that is how it reads to me.
JL-Virginia wrote:
I think that if you wave at Saturn tonight starting at 5:27 (E) you will have missed the boat by approx 80 minutes ... which is the amount of time it takes light to get to Saturn at a distance of 900,000,000 miles. Am I right ? JL-Virginia
I expect they were thoughtful enough to have already factored the distance. But that is not a definitive answer. I’m going with my gut as “already factored” because that is how it reads to me.
We can always wait for the photo to develop and see
if anyone is waving (or committing other speakable acts).
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If you live between 128º W & 48º W longitude wave to the east.
If you live between 48º W & 32º E longitude wave to the west.
(If you also live east of 20º W you might even see Saturn )
If you live east of 32º E or west of 128º W don't even bother.
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emc ... I'm not taking any chances ... I'm going out at both times ... starting to wave 5 minutes early and ending 25 minutes later than when I start ... both times ... This is a once in a lifetime opportunity ... I think ...
JL-Virginia wrote:I think that if you wave at Saturn tonight starting at 5:27 (E) you will have missed the boat by approx 80 minutes ... which is the amount of time it takes light to get to Saturn at a distance of 900,000,000 miles. Am I right ? JL-Virginia
CASSINI IMAGE TIMES Cassini's wide-angle camera will acquire a full end-to-end mosaic of images of Saturn's ring system over the course of 4 hours on July 19. The Earth, which will be near the rings, will be captured in a series of both wide-angle and narrow-angle camera images taken between 21:27 to 21:42 UTC on that day. Those times translated into the US time zones are:
EDT: 5:27-5:42 pm
CDT: 4:27-4:42 pm
MDT: 3:27-3:42 pm
PDT: 2:27-2:42 pm
To find the time of the event in your country or time zone, visit this website.
Know that the light-travel time from the Earth to Saturn has already been accounted for in the times above. That is, the photons that leave the Earth between those times will arrive at Saturn at the times that the shutters on the cameras open.
JL-Virginia wrote:
emc ... I'm not taking any chances ... I'm going out at both times ... starting to wave 5 minutes early and ending 25 minutes later than when I start ... both times ... This is a once in a lifetime opportunity ... I think ...
Worse come to worst they can always Photoshop you in.
neufer wrote:Worse come to worst they can always Photoshop you in.
Liverwurst That IS the worst wurst
I really like liverwurst! I used to take liverwurst sandwiches to work for lunch! My doctor don't want me to eat much liver any more; so when I do; it is fried baby beef sauteed with onions; alos smothered with dark gravy! I only get to eat this about twice a year; and then I really enjoy it!
With everybody smiling, waving and mooning we may send the wrong message. The inhabitants may think it is a signal for help and mount a rescue mission for us. Then WE would be responsible for causing an accidental invasion of Earth.
BillBixby wrote:
With everybody smiling, waving and mooning we may send the wrong message. The inhabitants may think it is a signal for help and mount a rescue mission for us. Then WE would be responsible for causing an accidental invasion of Earth.
We're going to be roped!
And we're going to be caged!
As for our blue dust speck – hah!
That they shall boil in a hot steaming kettle of Beezle-Nut Oil!"
“From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it’s different. Consider again that dot. That’s here, that’s home, that’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.”
Take a Picture of Saturn
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That 
