Front Row Seat To A Galactic Merger.

Picture of the day 2 - November 28, 2018

Cratered surface of a small burnt dwarf planet. Fissures run through the surface from the core cooling and the crust shrinking.

Picture of the day - November 22, 2018

Crescent of a moon against the silhouette of a green gas giant.

Picture of the day - November 15, 2018

Large gas giant orbiting a pair of binary suns within a large nebula.

Ultra-Close Orbits of Saturn = Ultra-Cool Science

On Sept. 15, 2017, our Cassini spacecraft ended its epic exploration of Saturn with a planned dive into the planet’s atmosphere–sending back new science to the very last second. The spacecraft is gone, but the science continues!

New research emerging from the final orbits represents a huge leap forward in our understanding of the Saturn system – especially the mysterious, never-before-explored region between the planet and its rings. Some preconceived ideas are turning out to be wrong while new questions are being raised. How did they form? What holds them in place? What are they made of?

Six teams of researchers are publishing their work Oct. 5 in the journal Science, based on findings from Cassini’s Grand Finale. That’s when, as the spacecraft was running out of fuel, the mission team steered Cassini spectacularly close to Saturn in 22 orbits before deliberately vaporizing it in a final plunge into the atmosphere in September 2017.

Knowing Cassini’s days were numbered, its mission team went for gold. The spacecraft flew where it was never designed to fly. For the first time, it probed Saturn’s magnetized environment, flew through icy, rocky ring particles and sniffed the atmosphere in the 1,200-mile-wide (2,000-kilometer-wide) gap between the rings and the cloud tops. Not only did the engineering push the spacecraft to its limits, the new findings illustrate how powerful and agile the instruments were.

Many more Grand Finale science results are to come, but today’s highlights include:

Complex organic compounds embedded in water nanograins rain down from Saturn’s rings into its upper atmosphere. Scientists saw water and silicates, but they were surprised to see also methane, ammonia, carbon monoxide, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The composition of organics is different from that found on moon Enceladus – and also different from those on moon Titan, meaning there are at least three distinct reservoirs of organic molecules in the Saturn system.

For the first time, Cassini saw up close how rings interact with the planet and observed inner-ring particles and gases falling directly into the atmosphere. Some particles take on electric charges and spiral along magnetic-field lines, falling into Saturn at higher latitudes – a phenomenon known as “ring rain.” But scientists were surprised to see that others are dragged quickly into Saturn at the equator. And it’s all falling out of the rings faster than scientists thought – as much as 10,000 kg of material per second.

Scientists were surprised to see what the material looks like in the gap between the rings and Saturn’s atmosphere. They knew that the particles throughout the rings ranged from large to small. They thought material in the gap would look the same. But the sampling showed mostly tiny, nanograin- and micron-sized particles, like smoke, telling us that some yet-unknown process is grinding up particles. What could it be? Future research into the final bits of data sent by Cassini may hold the answer.

Saturn and its rings are even more interconnected than scientists thought. Cassini revealed a previously unknown electric current system that connects the rings to the top of Saturn’s atmosphere.

Scientists discovered a new radiation belt around Saturn, close to the planet and composed of energetic particles. They found that while the belt actually intersects with the innermost ring, the ring is so tenuous that it doesn’t block the belt from forming.

Unlike every other planet with a magnetic field in our Solar System, Saturn’s magnetic field is almost completely aligned with its spin axis. Think of the planet and the magnetic field as completely separate things that are both spinning. Both have the same center point, but they each have their own axis about which they spin. But for Saturn the two axes are essentially the same – no other planet does that, and we did not think it was even possible for this to happen. This new data shows a magnetic-field tilt of less than 0.0095 degrees. (Earth’s magnetic field is tilted 11 degrees from its spin axis.) According to everything scientists know about how planetary magnetic fields are generated, Saturn should not have one. It’s a mystery physicists will be working to solve.

Cassini flew above Saturn’s magnetic poles, directly sampling regions where radio emissions are generated. The findings more than doubled the number of reported crossings of radio sources from the planet, one of the few non-terrestrial locations where scientists have been able to study a mechanism believed to operate throughout the universe. How are these signals generated? That’s still a mystery researchers are looking to uncover.

For the Cassini mission, the science rolling out from Grand Finale orbits confirms that the calculated risk of diving into the gap – skimming the upper atmosphere and skirting the edge of the inner rings – was worthwhile.

Almost everything going on in that region turned out to be a surprise, which was the importance of going there, to explore a place we’d never been before. And the expedition really paid off!

Analysis of Cassini data from the spacecraft’s instruments will be ongoing for years to come, helping to paint a clearer picture of Saturn.

To read the papers published in Science, visit: URL to papers

To learn more about the ground-breaking Cassini mission and its 13 years at Saturn, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/index.html

Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.

Another Moon Shot

Picture of the day - October 26, 2018

A large moon against the backdrop of a stunningly colorful gas giant and it’s rings.

Pictures of the day - December 19, 2018

Insight A System - Fourth Planet (Insight A-IV)

Insight A-IV is the fourth and largest planet orbiting Insight A. It is a large ice giant planet with a mass 41.38 times that of Earth and a diameter of 4.41 Earths. The planet has a hot atmosphere with a temperature of 297 F, which is dominated by hydrogen and helium. Additionally, a single large moon orbits the planet alongside 13 smaller asteroid-like satellites.

The planet orbits it’s sun at an average distance of 0.36 AU, completing an orbit once every 72.17 Earth Days. The planet is not tidally locked, but has a slow rotational rate of 288.70 Earth days, resulting in solar days that last 96.23 Earth days.

High Resolution Pictures

Insight A-IV

Stormy North Pole

Setting Sun

Crescents

View from the moon

Uranus Banned from Tumblr???

That’s right folks. Under the new Tumblr guidelines all forms of pornography are now banned from this site. That includes the solar system’s butthole. From this point forward I am not going to be able to post any pictures of the 7th planet from the sun, because the planet is not considered child safe.

When this shocking development became known, we asked other members of the solar system what they thought about the new ban.

Obviously the Lunar community was the first to respond, feeling they would be targeted next. The moon had this to say.

Luna: “Uranus banned? They better not ban me next or I am going to moon the shit about them.”

After Luna’s statement, the president of the lunar community (Ganymede) made the following statement. “The Lunar Community does not condone any acts of obscenity. I apologize for Luna’s statement, she was been in rehab lately for her moon rock addiction. She might be a little temperamental about this new ban.”

While most of the solar system community condemned Tumblr for its new ban, interesting enough there was one supporter of the ban.

Pluto of the dwarf planet community recently spoke in support of the ban. When asked why he supported the ban, Pluto has this to say.

Pluto: While everyone is busy dealing with this Tumblr banning Uranus fiasco, I can now spend my time focusing on getting my revenge against the other planets for booting me out of the planet club, and they will be too busy to even notice it. “Evil Laugh”

More news will be posted on this story as it becomes available.

Next up: Tumblr banning bunny butts? Rabbits in revolt!

Dry Desert World

2nd Picture of the Day - October 15, 2018

A Mars-Like desert world covered in dunes of iron oxide dust. A small satellite crosses the face of the planet.

Picture of the day - December 18, 2018

Polar vortex over the northern pole of Insight A-II

The northern pole of a large moon orbiting the blue gas giant. The clouds like structures visible are two galaxies in the process of colliding.