APOD: Ring Scan (2016 Nov 24)

[APOD Robot]

Ring Scan

Explanation: Scroll right and you can cruise along the icy rings of Saturn. This high resolution scan is a mosaic of images presented in natural color. The images were recorded in May 2007 over about 2.5 hours as the Cassini spacecraft passed above the unlit side of the rings. To help track your progress, major rings and gaps are labeled along with the distance from the center of the gas giant in kilometers. The alphabetical designation of Saturn's rings is historically based on their order of discovery; rings A and B are the bright rings separated by the Cassini division. In order of increasing distance from Saturn, the seven main rings run D,C,B,A,F,G,E. (Faint, outer rings G and E are not imaged here.) Four days from now, on November 29, Cassini will make a close flyby of Saturn's moon Titan and use the large moon's gravity to nudge the spacecraft into a series of 20 daring, elliptical, ring-grazing orbits. Diving through the ring plane just 11,000 kilometers outside the F ring (far right) Cassini's first ring-graze will be on December 4.

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[LMMT]

Will it be posible to have the Cassini so near to the rings to show individual elements of it? Thank you!

[geckzilla]

Will it be posible to have the Cassini so near to the rings to show individual elements of it? Thank you!

It's not going near the rings with the larger particles. The rings vary in composition and are mostly composed of very small particles. There are some pile ups in some places forming weird spiky mountains, but Cassini won't be going near those.



It'll be staying near the green rings in that image. Click the image and read the APOD text to learn more about the sizes of the particles in those regions. On the odd chance that Cassini images a larger particle, it would likely appear as a streak across the image if it appeared at all. Cassini is moving kind of fast and has to track objects when imaging them.

[Guest]

Will it be posible to have the Cassini so near to the rings to show individual elements of it? Thank you!

It's not going near the rings with the larger particles. The rings vary in composition and are mostly composed of very small particles. There are some pile ups in some places forming weird spiky mountains, but Cassini won't be going near those.



It'll be staying near the green rings in that image. Click the image and read the APOD text to learn more about the sizes of the particles in those regions. On the odd chance that Cassini images a larger particle, it would likely appear as a streak across the image if it appeared at all. Cassini is moving kind of fast and has to track objects when imaging them.

Thanks for the informations. Resolving the rings' elements is my an old scientific dream of mine, and when I knew Cassini would get through the rings at th end of the mission, I really got excited. I hope we'll see something.

[geckzilla]

Thanks for the informations. Resolving the rings' elements is my an old scientific dream of mine, and when I knew Cassini would get through the rings at th end of the mission, I really got excited. I hope we'll see something.

Wouldn't it be great? I think some of the illustrations are quite a bit off. Would be nice to see what they really look like up close, though I imagine much of them are kind of like a fog and more or less disappear up close. Cassini will try to pick up some ring particles during its final orbits. Won't help us see them, but might help characterize them.

[Dad is watching]

Is there a correlation between the gravitational attraction of a planet (size/mass) and the speed of rotation (rotational velocity) of that planet that forms, or is a prerequisite for forming, a ring system?

[Dr. Work]

The picture doesn't allow us to "cruise along the icy rings of Saturn," it allows us to move across the rings.

[bystander]

http://asterisk.apod.com/viewtopic.php?t=36586

[neufer]

Resolving the rings' elements is my an old scientific dream of mine, and when I knew Cassini would get through the rings at th end of the mission, I really got excited. I hope we'll see something.

Wouldn't it be great? I think some of the illustrations are quite a bit off. Would be nice to see what they really look like up close, though I imagine much of them are kind of like a fog and more or less disappear up close. Cassini will try to pick up some ring particles during its final orbits. Won't help us see them, but might help characterize them.

Most likely they're made iron or brass.

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

<<Brass ring devices were developed during the heyday of the carousel in the U.S.—about 1880 to 1921. At one time, the riders on the outside row of horses were often given a little challenge, perhaps as a way to draw interest or build excitement, more often as an enticement to sit on the outside row of horses which frequently did not move up and down and were therefore less enticing by themselves. Most rings were iron, but one or two per ride were made of brass; if a rider managed to grab a brass ring, it could be redeemed for a free ride. References to a literal brass ring go back into the 1890s.

As the carousel began to turn, rings were fed to one end of a wooden arm that was suspended above the riders. Riders hoped that the timing of the carousel rotation (and the rise-and-fall motion of their seat, when movable seats were included in the outer circle of the carousel) would place them within reach of the dispenser when a ring (and preferably a brass ring) was available.

"Grabbing the brass ring" or getting a "shot at the brass ring" also means striving for the highest prize, or living life to the fullest. The phrase has been found in dictionaries as far back as the late 19th century.>>

[ta152h0]

can't wait for New Horizons to reach Saggitarious

[Chris Peterson]

can't wait for New Horizons to reach Saggitarious

Sagittarius is a two-dimensional area on the celestial sphere, not a place or physical thing that can be reached.

[geckzilla]

Video illustrating the things Cassini will investigate as it moves close to Saturn's rings:

Click to play embedded YouTube video.

[neufer]

can't wait for New Horizons to reach Saggitarious

• Neither can the Sagittarians:

[b][color=#0000FF]The two regions of space in the constellation Sagittarius from where the Wow! signal may have originated. The ambiguity is due to how the experiment was designed. The widths (right ascension) of the red bands have been exaggerated.[/color][/b]

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<<The Wow! signal was a strong narrowband radio signal that appeared to have come from the direction of Sagittarius northwest of the globular cluster of M55, in the constellation Sagittarius, roughly 2.5 degrees south of the fifth-magnitude star group Chi Sagittarii (Distance: 221 ly), and about 3.5 degrees south of the plane of the ecliptic. The closest easily visible star is Tau Sagittarii (Distance: 122 ly). In 2012, on the 35th anniversary of the Wow! signal, Arecibo Observatory beamed a response from humanity, containing 10,000 Twitter messages, in the direction from which the signal originated. Arecibo scientists have attempted to increase the chances of intelligent life receiving and decoding the celebrity videos and crowd-sourced tweets by attaching a repeating sequence header to each message that will let the recipient know that the messages are intentional and from another intelligent life form.>>

[DavidLeodis]

It's a fascinating image taken during a remarkably successful mission . It will be sad to see it end but it will at least go out in a blaze of glory.

That would be an interesting bar code that the rings pattern shows in the image .