|
Saturn
Turns 60
Thursday, July 19, 2007
For
Video and Full Caption
Sixtieth
moon to be discovered at Saturn, indicated in red.
Image
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
|
Scientists have recently
discovered that the planet Saturn is turning 60 - not years, but
moons.
"We detected the 60th moon orbiting Saturn
using the Cassini spacecraft's powerful wide-angle camera,"
said Carl Murray, a Cassini imaging team scientist from Queen
Mary, University of London. "I was looking at images of the
region near the Saturnian moons Methone and Pallene and something
caught my eye."
The newly discovered moon first
appeared as a very faint dot in a series of images Cassini took
of the Saturnian ring system on May 30 of this year. After the
initial detection, Murray and fellow Cassini imaging scientists
played interplanetary detective, searching for clues of the new
moon in the voluminous library of Cassini images to date.
The
Cassini imaging team's legwork paid off. They were able to locate
numerous additional detections, spanning from June 2004 to June
2007. "With these new data sets we were able to establish a
good orbit for the new moon,” said Murray. "Knowing
where the moons are at all times is important to the Cassini
mission for several reasons."
One of the most
important reasons for Cassini to chronicle these previously
unknown space rocks is so the spacecraft itself does not run into
them. Another reason is each discovery helps provide a better
understanding about how Saturn's ring system and all its billions
upon billions of parts work and interact together. Finally, a
discovery of a moon is important because with this new knowledge,
the Cassini mission planners and science team can plan to perform
science experiments during future observations if and when the
opportunity presents itself.
What of this new, 60th
discovered moon of Saturn? Cassini scientists believe "Frank"
(the working name for the moon until another, perhaps, more
appropriate one is found) is about 1.2 miles (2 kilometers) wide
and, like so many of its neighbors, is made mostly of ice and
rock. The moon's location in the Saturnian sky is between the
orbits of Methone and Pallene. It is the fifth moon
discovered by the Cassini imaging team.
"When the
Cassini mission launched back in 1997, we knew of only 18 moons
orbiting Saturn," said Murray. "Now, between
Earth-based telescopes and Cassini we have more than tripled that
number - and each and every new discovery adds another piece to
the puzzle and becomes another new world to explore."
Murray and his colleagues may get the chance to explore
Saturn's 60th moon. The Cassini spacecraft's trajectory will put
it within 7,300 miles (11,700 kilometers) in December of 2009.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of
NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages the
Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate,
Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras
were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team
is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
Source:
NASA / JPL
|
Scientific
Frontline®
The
Comm Center
Space
Weather Alerts
Stellar
Nights®
Imagineers
The
E.A.R.®
World
News Report
Photo,
Sketches, & Video Gallery
|
