To anyone else interested in spreading the word (about astronomy or any other science-y topic): keep it relatively simple and fun, and have some handy, eye-catching visuals if you can. Phil’s use of everyday objects is great, and can always be supplemented with more ‘advanced’ things like posters or books. The audience can get hooked by the simple presentation and shown the small sample of what else is available, and hopefully be inspired to do a little investigation on their own. (In my case with the school astronomy presentations, I also had a few models of both real spacecraft and sci-fi spaceships to help attract attention while showing the difference between reality & fiction.)

An aside… is anyone else interested in the cool-looking artwork Phil always seems to have adorning his walls? I bet I could get lost in his house for days just going through his collected stuff…

One question: as the two moons pass so close to each other, wouldn’t their respective masses and gravity tug on the other and play around with the perception of a smooth transit by a third object? Is it possible Cassini is making their transits smoother because of its motion?

Lock in A, Eddie. (Sorry, Australian TV reference.)

I’m fairly sure Titan’s gravitational effect on Enceledus wouldn’t manifest itself by making the E moon wobble.

There are astonishing shots in there, and if you’re American your tax dollars paid for them.

Actually, since Cassini is a joint NASA / ESA / ISA mission, Europeans’ tax Euros also paid for them.

It’s been depicted Jeffrey Carver’s book “Neptune Crossing” – it’s called “EineySteiney” there and basically is just that – billiards in three dimensions, with the addition of simulated gravity between objects and “black holes” to put the balls into (one version of the game uses textures for the balls that look like the planets of the solar system, too).

Great animation BA. Nicely done. Cheers for that.

BTW. Was that impromptu model – dime Enceladus, tennis ball Titan – approximately to scale? If so, then what would represent Hyperion and Saturn respectively?*

(Tries to recall how big a US “dime” is versus Aussie currency – looks like about the size of our ten cent coin?)

* Lemon seed for Hyperion? Large inflated beach ball for Saturn maybe?

I had an even dumber ad –

“3-Minute Chakra test
Take the Free Chakra Test to Find Out Which of Your Chakras Are Weak”

Some people!

Now, throw in some appropiate music, grab a lot more sequences, and you can make something like Chris Abbas did.

back on topic.

Being a Photoshop geek, I followed some of the links to combining the filtered images to create full color images. The process is slightly more involved than I expected, but pretty straight-forward. That’s going to be an endless source of amusement for me.

Also, for those without Photoshop, you don’t necessarily need it anymore! The business end of the software used to be a filter, but it’s now a standalone program that can be downloaded for free.

Off to discover some new artwork for my office walls…

Zyg

My Earth evolved brain just expects planets to move in that way relative to the orientation of my head. In the same way that the horizon is horizontal instead of vertical.

You grab a relatively boring subject, make a text or even a video out of it, and the result is a completely fascinating and passionate statement for and of science. I mean, c’mon, that were just some bodies passing each other… and yet you (are able to) present it as if it were the greatest thing on earth… no… in the solar system!

And you know what? That IS amazing! More people like you are totally needed. Good work!

I hope that in the future I learn to show this passion about astrophysics and science to other people (especially laymen), as well. I don’t know, if I will ever be able to do it like you do. But I’ll try.

Btw: Was that a tennis ball OF SCIENCE?

“…there are fleets of very thin, long-winged spacecraft that are going to destroy the world!!”

Well, it makes perfect sense that they would have very long wings. There are gases in space, of course, but the atoms are so thinly spread that it would take enormous wings to get any kind of lift for a spaceplane. It’s all perfectly scientifical.

(Of course, the wings have got nothing on the propeller!)

But what bothers me is the ad.

Google puts ads on Youtube videos, and the one on this one makes me shake my head. It’s for “Quantum Jumping,” a website that sets off all sorts of skeptical alarms in my head. I haven’t looked into it at all, but is sure sounds like a lot of pseudoscientific gibberish.

Just thought you should know what’s being advertised on your videos.

~10 x difference

diameter of a dime = 0.705 inches
so you’d need a ball ~ 10x bigger, so something a little smaller than a basketball

But you’d also need to increase the distance to keep things to scale.

Admit it, there are fleets of very thin, long-winged spacecraft that are going to destroy the world!!

*flee*