Cassini keeps amazing me, even when I start to think I’m getting used to incredible images beamed back from Saturn.
But this is new: it took several images of Saturn’s aurora, and strung them together to make a video! Here’s a still frame:
The outline of Saturn is there, along with some latitude lines for reference (the bright thin wedge is the daylit side of the planet itself). You can see stars blurred in the background, with the aurora the orangey glow rising about the Saturnian cloud deck. This frame is cool, but for frak’s sake go watch the video! It’s mesmerizing. I’d put it here, but it’s 3 Mb and that would destroy the Hive Overmind servers.
The images put together to create the animation were taken over four days. Interestingly (well, to me anyway) these images were taken in visible light; we already know from Hubble observations that Saturn’s aurorae are bright in UV.
These northern lights on Saturn are formed in pretty much the same way they are on Earth: particles in the Sun’s solar wind get captured in the magnetic field of the planet, and are swept to the poles where they slam into molecules in the atmosphere, lighting it up (literally) like a neon sign. The details are far more complicated, of course, but that’s the basic picture. The images from Cassini don’t show color, which is too bad: the color of the glow can tell you what chemical elements are in the atmosphere, since different atoms emit at different wavelengths. Still, there is much to be learned about Saturn’s magnetic field from images like these.
And may I add: wow. Aurorae, from a billion kilometers away. Incredible!
Speaking of web pages showing scale (OK, it was almost two weeks ago, but still cool), BABloggee Mike Sperry reminded me of this site which shows the solar system to scale… all on one web page! The Sun is displayed when you go to the page, and you can scroll to the right to see the planets, drawn in scale both in size and distance.
The Sun is about 560 pixels wide, putting Pluto something like 2 million pixels to the right. And some people wonder why it’ll take the New Horizons mission 9 years to get to Pluto…
I typically don’t like most mashups, but this one was pretty good… especially the last two minutes, which are brilliant! Warning: for major Doctor Who nerds only.
OK, it wasn’t at full power, and this is just a preliminary test, but still: It works!
In the graphic above (click to get the whole thing, plus others) shows the particles detected in the ATLAS experiment, one of the two big detectors on the LHC. The paths of the particles are shown, and they all trace back to one spot (or close enough), indicating they all emerged from the same patch of space inside the collider, just as you’d expect if they were the products of a subatomic collision.
There’s still a long way to go, but this was a very important step along the way. Congrats to everyone at CERN!
When I was in Florida for Carl Sagan Day, I was happy to see my friend Rachel Dunlop ("Dr. Rachie") from Australia was there too. She was in Miami, heard about the event at the last minute, and drove (on the wrong side of the road) to Ft. Lauderdale to attend.
Rachel is one of the many people who puts together the Skeptic Zone podcast, and she snagged a bunch of interviews at the celebration, including with D.J. Grothe, Randi, me… and my mom. Yes, my mother was there, and D.J. made sure she got to be in the interview as well. You can listen and comment on the podcast, and if you like it why not subscribe to the podcast via iTunes?
If you went to BadAstronomy.com and found yourself here, never fear: the BA Blog has moved to its new home at Discover Blogs. The original BA site (with the Moon Hoax debunking and all that) is still online, too.
Phil Plait, the creator of Bad Astronomy, is an astronomer, lecturer, and author. After ten years working on Hubble Space Telescope and six more working on astronomy education, he struck out on his own as a writer. He has written two books, dozens of magazine articles, and 12 bazillion blog articles. He is a skeptic, and fights misuses of science as well as praising the wonder of real science.
Contact me: The Bad Astronomer "at" gmail "dot" com
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"If things worked the way I wanted them to, any reporter about to do another 'sensational' story on deadly meteors would consult this volume, and bang! common sense would find its way into the news. How strange would that world be?" -- Adam Savage, Mythbusters
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The opinions and ideas expressed in this blog are solely those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect those of Discover Magazine and/or the James Randi Educational Foundation, of which Dr. Plait serves as President.
