Archives for the 'extraterrestrial moons' Category
Diving past Enceladus
Published on 11 Mar 2008 at 3:00 pm.
No Comments.
Filed under extraterrestrial moons.
The Cassini spacecraft will fly by Enceladus at a distance of 50 kilometers on March 12, 2008.
Jarnsaxa, Greip, and Tarqeq
Published on 17 Oct 2007 at 10:51 am.
No Comments.
Filed under extraterrestrial moons.
Wow. My spell checker had a field day on that title! No, those are not random keys that I pressed. Those are the names that have now been assigned to three of Saturn’s most recently discovered moons.
Solar System bodies are not just given random names. There are rules for naming things. […]
Read ‘Jarnsaxa, Greip, and Tarqeq’
60 and counting …
Published on 21 Jul 2007 at 11:16 am.
7 Comments.
Filed under extraterrestrial moons.
A recent JPL news release announced the discovery of a 60th moon for the planet Saturn. There’s only four more to go to put Saturn into first place for the number of moons! (Jupiter has 63 known moons.) Now, granted, a number of these moons still need to be officially confirmed, and […]
Callisto from afar
Published on 6 Apr 2007 at 10:59 am.
4 Comments.
Filed under extraterrestrial moons.
Callisto is one of the four Galilean moons of Jupiter, easily seen in even modest telescopes. But, from Earth, it is generally just a dot. It wasn’t until the Voyager missions that we got our first closeup views of the moon. Since then, the Hubble telescope and the latest large ground based […]
Titanic Lakes
Published on 19 Mar 2007 at 10:06 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under extraterrestrial moons.
Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, has long been suspected of harboring lakes, rivers, and seas. Titan has an atmosphere, and it is shrouded by a cloud of methane and other organic molecules. The temperature and pressure at Titan’s surface is very close to the triple point of methane (the main ingredient in natural gas).
A […]
View from Io
Published on 11 Feb 2007 at 10:02 pm.
3 Comments.
Filed under extraterrestrial moons.
Io is a Moon of Jupiter. It is the closest of the four big Galilean moons, though four other of Jupiter’s 63 known moons are closer to the planet. Io orbits Jupiter in just about 1.77 days. Being close to the planet, each orbit carries Io behind Jupiter. If you were […]
Hyperion
Published on 28 Jan 2007 at 2:04 pm.
No Comments.
Filed under extraterrestrial moons.
I saw that today’s Astronomy Picture of the Day was Hyperion, so I thought that I’d say a bit about this moon. In September, 2005, the Cassini spacecraft flew by Saturn’s moon Hyperion, providing us our best view of this enigmatic body. And, enigmatic it certainly is. Discovered in 1848, little […]
