Starship Asterisk*

All,
The APOD for the 15th February showed a new view of Rhea from Cassini, and commented on the wispy white lines on that moon and on Dione. It did not comment on the extraordinary straight line feature that cuts across the globe from 8 o'clock to 5 o'clock in this view. This line is real, not an artefact, as it can be seen on Voyager pictures of Rhea. See: http://www.solarviews.com/raw/sat/rhea1.gif

A similar feature is seen on views of Dione from Cassini AND from Voyager:
Cassini: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/i ... type=image
The line is seen below and to the left of the four craters in a semicircle in the middle of the disk, below and crossing a sheaf of more filamentous markings.
Voyager: http://www.solarviews.com/raw/sat/dione5.jpg
Where it can be seen in the same position.

Both these lines are new, in that they cross all other features, and astonishingly straight, when compared with other straight line features, graben, faulting on the Moon and Mars.

The line on Dione was dubbed Travis' Fissure on the Bad Astronomy site, after the contributor who pointed it out ( http://www.badastronomy.com/phpBB/viewt ... re&start=0 ). No explanation could be made there for these lines - does the Asterisk have a better idea?
John

My previous post in this thread has been studiously ignored. If I were a conspiracy theorist.......

Now the lastest APOD is of Rhea again, but from an angle that doesn't include any features that I can pick out from the previous view. So nothing new about the Line. But it is there! See previous post.

Theorising about the Great White Spot says that white material, ?ice, has been ejected by a recent impact. Could the Line be a fracture showing up because of underlying ice? But why so straight?

John

could you please make a composite of image areas with "streaks" and add arrows or something - or else I can't see anything of what you are talking about

Makc,
A composite is ready, but how can I upload it?
John

did you read this? if yes, perhaps you need yet more reading. alternatively, you could mail it to me to the makc.the.great.gmail.com, and I will host it for SHORT(!) period of time.

Makc,
Thank you for that advice!

This is a gif composite of four images, two of Rhea and two of Dione; in each pair one is from Cassini and one from Voyager. The features in question are marked by arrows.


The composite has been compressed to upload it onto the net, but the very fine features in question are still visible. That on Dione from Voyager is barely so. Each image contains the Internet address of the original, so please look at that and use my arrows to find the features.

I maintain that these are not photographic or electronic artefacts, as in both cases the features are part of the same terrain in pics taken twenty years apart.
I'll be most interested in anyone's comments, about what these astonishingly straight lines represent.

John

Looks like big, long scars on the surface of the moons to me. Other than that I'm not really sure. I'll point RJN toward this thread tomorrow at lunch, perhaps he can shed some light on this.

I give these long straight lines the highest probability of being a CS type of crater chain.

Norval

Thank you, craterchains, I had almost forgotten this thread!

However, I'm worried by your attribution of these markings to "CS crater chains" as Googling for that gets loony "extraterrestrial strafing runs" sites and abusive message boards.

I am reassured that "crater chains" alone gets, among others, an old APOD http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap950715.html
with yet another line out there around Saturn, on Callisto, when the resolution was enough to show distinct craters: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00549. The APOD compares this effect with that that occurred to Shoemaker-Levy breaking up into a 'chain' of smaller objects to impact in a line.

I still can't find out what "CS" means. And strange that this wholly rational explanation has not been raised in these discussions before, with so many able and sane contributors.

The original "Travis' Fissure" that started this here and on the old Bad Astronomy thread appears to have straight sides, but that could be due to low definition, and I'll look forward to better pics of these structures when they are available.

John

Me thinks your google must be broken.

Googling "CS crater chains" brought up the explaination for me.

Norval

craterchains,
Here's the list of Google hits:

1/ http://www.craterchains.com/ (Your's?)
Quote from FIRST paragraph:" After exhausting all other ideas and the
given theories surrounding crater chain formations we settle on weapons as the most likely cause."

2/ http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php ... ge=1&pp=20
Quote from first post:"This thread is for the purpose of discussing the craters on Mercury, whether they are of a natural occurence or the result of alien wars, as per Norvals speculations."
[Just noticed - second thread there is from "crater chains(Norval". You are Norval?]

3/ http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=11745
This thread is closed, but is mainly composed of people offering arguments against the alien war theory, to which you, craterchains or someone using your name, replies repeatedly, "Not playing your game." Not a rational way of discussing a topic.

The next hit is a verbal description of the 'geography' of Mercury, without speculation on causation, that is couched in highly technical language. And the next is a Wikipedia entry on the Shoemaker-Levy event - those holes on Jupiter are in a line, but hardly conjoined, so I hope I may be forgiven for looking elsewhere. I needed further searching, prompted by your clue, craterchains, to realise what these Saturnian satellite surface objects probably are and how S-L is such a good example. But not evidence of ancient alien wars.

I do thank you, craterchains, for pushing me in the right direction. It is ironic that someone who holds views that, to me and a majority, are irrational has shown me the light when I came to this site for a rational scientific view.

John

Yes, I find it interesting that no one ever suggested crater chains as a possible reason for those straight lines you were questioning.

Answers can be found, if one searches long enough.

Edited to add; The Rest of the Story.

It is curious that the poster states, QUOTE "No explanation could be made there for these lines - does the Asterisk have a better idea? John" UQ Now why did John make that statement? Curious. The images in that thread clearly show that the line is a crater chain.

In that thread at BA there are over twenty posts that suggest "crater chains" as the most probable cause. Noted was the amount of "fun" being made of myself and Gale (FieryIce), and that Phil, the BA himself didn't respond in that thread.

Constantly, reference is made to SL9 as showing how a crater chain could be made. When in fact the SL9 comet clearly demonstrated that a broken up hunk of space junk, like a hand full of various sized rocks tossed at mud, won't make a concise CS type of crater chain in anyone's life time. The scientific paper that John dismisses so easily states that these types of crater chains can only happen with in a certain limited "window" of
gravitational fields. That 14 of the 15 crater chains on Mercury are way outside of that window of opportunity to form a chain. Read it carefully.

Taking into consideration that most scientists have stated that these types of concise crater chains would be extremely rare, why are we seeing hundreds of them on planets and moons? Why do we see thousands in our solar system? Now how is that possible?

The closest visual match that can be found in mankind's archive of pictures are those of automatic weapons strikes. Modify an Optical Character Recognition computer program and see what it produces for you.

The last statement in that thread as of October 29, 2005 was this by John.
QUOTE "If genuine, something has been raking the Moons of Saturn!" UQ

Something has obviously been "raking" the bodies in our solar system, and it wasn't broken up space rocks. I recommend that any one researching crater chains give it the serious thought and scrutiny they deserve. or,,,

As John mentions QUOTE "My previous post in this thread has been studiously ignored. If I were a conspiracy theorist....... "

Norval