You’re possibly even more right than you know: as discussed on rasfs on a number of occasions, and here:

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3w.html

stealth in space is virtually impossible with rockets. Even dinky rockets like the Shuttle’s main engines can be spotted with conventional equipment as far away as Pluto. Your classic SF atomic rocket would be visible from even greater distances (As I noted in a review of Stephen Baxter’s awful MAYFLOWER II, the drives on his stealth-generation ship should have been seen up to ten light years away, assuming no advancements in telescope technology).

It’s an effect well-known to photographers and cinematographers: taking a narrow-angle picture from a long way off flattens out perspective, and taking a wide-angle picture from a shorter distance tends to exaggerate it (think of Alfred Hitchcock’s (or his cinematographer’s) freaky dolly/zoom trick in which the amount of perspective varies continuously during the shot).

I have images/comments posted at:

http://www.frontiernet.net/~greggail/Plait/Plaitimages.htm

Sorry for the poor quality. The originals are of much higher quality.

I’m also still amazed at the shot, but it is disconcerting to have to look sideways at the image when I click on the original link. I haven’t any magnetic boots to enable me to stand on the wall, and not get a crick in my neck!

And the point about color filters, I reckon they have yet to process them to generate even better shots. I wonder what the real colors are though?

Ivan.

An amateur astronomer was looking at Saturn through his telescope and a passerby (most probably a neighbor) asked if his son could look…of course he said yes. After the young man looked the father drew the amateur aside and said that it was not nice to fool a child”

Yes, this did really happen in New Jersey.

[BTW, no blog on your cool S&T article??????? What kinda shill are you? ]

I’d like to visit Titan but wouldn’t want to stay there for very long.

Think of all that smog and the fact that it is nearly ten times the distance from the sun as the Earth. It must get depressing after a while.

By the way, I believe that the atmosphere’s pressure is about one and a half times as great and the density typically four to five times as great.

Um, I’ve never read any of the Lucky Starr series (except for an excerpt or two in the “clip show” books like Opus 100). I definitely had “The Martian Way” in mind, but thanks for reminding me that other stories are out there too.

The most amazing fantasies of the human mind are tame compared to the awesome reality which science finds in nature.

“The Lord sure makes some beautiful worlds”.

The Universe never ceases to amaze me in it’s ability to both confound and inspire.

All these alignments that Cassini manages to capture in it’s orbit are amazing. Planners must be thrilled to see such things, not to mention being proud of the effort put into this wonderful machine.

Seeing the title of the entry and the image conjures another appropiate phrase; “strange new worlds…” (I wonder if the BA considered THAT as an alternate title).
True, these are not new (in terms of our discovery of them), but they are strange!

Tom

I was wondering, but somehow I seem to associate ‘Titan’ with thunder, certainly one of the gods, Zeus did throw a thunderbolt down and slayed the titans. Not as I remembered it from somewhere, rather the other way round.

Just look at Titan, the Saturn moon, though, with it’s thick atmosphere. There must be a lot of thunder there. You know, where there is thunder there must be lightning. (doh!). I guess it would be a dangerous place to be, and noisy.

Does anybody else share that view?

Ivan.