@3. VinceRN : “Saturn’s moons are definitely the coolest part of the solar system to me. Though this rock we live on is pretty cool too.”

Nah, Pluto – make that Eris, no make that *Sedna* – has to be the coolest place in our solar system!

NB. Apparently one of the Lunar polar craters has the record for coldest place currently known in our solar system – but I’m betting that we’ll find Pluto or another of the ice dwarfs or a cometary nucleus has colder spots!

@8. Ken B :

“any object that tries to stray out of that plane”
Hey! Don’t you have an article about why anthropomorphizing is bad?

Well animals (eg. pet dogs & cats & cows) tend to stray as much or more than humans do – so I’m not sure “straying” quite equals anthropomorphising!

PS. About the whole “golf clap” thing (no, I don’t get it either) – could it have something to do with the ‘slice’ word maybe?

Blog site: http://bkellysky.wordpress.com

*http://www.westchesterastronomers.org/
Look for the NEWSLETTER section – click on June 2011 for the PDF.

Good guess, but no

Could you go into a bit more detail?

It’s set me to thinking, and I don’t have an answer . . . yet.

Maybe some knowledgeable other commenter will be able to give us the answer (and save me the bother of looking it up – hey, I’m a biochemist and celestial mechanics make my head hurt).

“The plane of the ecliptic (also known as the ecliptic plane) is the plane of the Earth’s orbit around the Sun”

Whereas earths equatorial plane is inclined 23 degrees to the plane of the ecliptic. The Moon is not just in orbit of earth. It also orbits the sun(in the plane of the ecliptic).

Gary 7

o/~ Nearer, my God, to thee… o/~
Too soon?

Nigel, I’m glad I’m not the only one who chuckled at Christoper’s phraseology.

BA, neat pic, thanks for posting this one. But I’m also “wondering what chris is”. Why isn’t our moon in an equatorial orbit?

i understand why the moon’s rotation is tidally locked with its revolution, and that eventually the earth and moon will be locked together (assuming it happens before the sun goes red giant). what i don’t understand is why, after more than 4 billion years, the moon’s orbit and the earth’s equatorial plane have not matched up.

given how far the moon has moved away from the earth during that time, and assuming the impact theory is correct, shouldn’t the moon’s orbit have drifted out of the ecliptic by now?

is it because the earth/moon mass ratio is so much lower than the corresponding ratios for the gas/ice giants and their moons?

I’m wondering what Joel is.

At a wild guess, I’d say Homo sapiens.

I presumed the same thing actually.

Wonder whether it would be even better in a colour version or not?

@16. Christopher Shoup :

@JJA and @Digital Atheist : I think the gap you’re referring to is not a gap in ring material but the gap between the near and far side of the rings.

Hmmm .. I assumed that was the Cassini division myself, or maybe the Encke one but I could be mistaken, naturally.

PFFFT! Any true conspiracy theorist would tell you that not only is there no Titan or Saturn or Cassini, there is no way that any planet could ever have rings or be made mostly of gas/liquid/ice. Anything farther than the Moon is OBVIOUSLY a hoax perpetrated using holgraphic laser technology.

I think the gap you’re referring to is not a gap in ring material but the gap between the near and far side of the rings. I think the farther left is simply the curve of the ring and thetop part of the “gap” is the near or far part of the rings and the bottom is the opposite as the rings circle the planet.

If this is the case then it wouldn’t explain the lack of visible bits of Titan through the gap though.

If I were a conspiracy theorist and not simply a skeptic I’d say this was proof of a bad photoshop job and that there is no such thing as “Cassini” OR this “Saturn” nonsense.

You may be right as regards haze blocking the view, or mit may be a darker section of ring material? my reasoning for this being a slightly below ring view is the fact that the gap/dark area mid-ring increases as viewed left to right. It would be nice to see the whole uncropped version to see if the gap closes on the right side though.

Schuyler:If you look at Titan, you see a predominantly bright area, and when you look at the rings, you see a predominantly black area. I think your iris is adjusting accordingly and this produces the illusion of a receding moon. (Or perhaps it’s a contrast illusion brought about by Titan’s blurry-looking circumference?)

To me, the ring appears slightly bent upwards where it crosses Titan, an effect which I can confirm is an optical illusion by using a straightedge.