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Subscribe to RSSAn animation chronicles the Cassini probe's June 18 flyby of the Saturnian moon Helene.
NASA's Cassini orbiter has captured another close-up view of the Saturnian moon Helene, clearing the way for a global map of the 20-mile-wide "ice queen."
The spacecraft got its latest look at the icy moon on Saturday from a distance of 4,330 miles (6,968 kilometers), more than a year after its closest-ever Helene flyby in March 2010. This time, the pictures provided sunlit views of the moon's Saturn-facing side, improving on last year's imagery. Taken together, these pictures will enable astronomers to finish a global map that could shed additional light on the grooved, pockmarked moon's impact history, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in today's image advisory.
Helene sticks out among Saturn's more than 60 moons for a couple of reasons: First of all, it is gravitationally bound in the same orbit as another, much larger icy moon called Dione. This makes it one of four "Trojan moons" in the Saturnian system, along with Polydeuces (which is also bound to Dione) and Telesto and Calypso (both bound to Tethys).
Helene's surface also reveals a network of gully-like features that may have been created by landslides (or, in this case, dustslides or iceslides). Working up a detailed map of the moon should help astronomers get a better grip on the gullies' genesis.
For more about the latest flyby, check out this posting from the Planetary Society's Emily Lakdawalla. And for more about Saturn's moons, check out these recent reports:
- Scientists bid to float their boat on Titan's seas
- Enceladus sparks auroral show on Saturn
- Can you spot the Saturnian moons?
- A double scoop of Saturn's moons
- Slideshow: Cassini's greatest hits
You can connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page or following @b0yle on Twitter. Also, give a look to "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
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lets turn it into a ski resort.
just gotta watch for hitting escape velocity...
Iv'e met the "Ice Queen". Beleive me, this rock ain't it!
nice vid. Every moon around saturn deserves several imperial probe droids, you can bet once commecial space mining is underway, wildcatters of every variety are going to rush their version of the imperial probe droids to this and several other moons. This one may be a quick water stop for manned missions, as well, certain compounds and precious metals, if present, will be easy pickings since the escape velocity is so small. Mapping now is a great idea, but soon we will want nuetron spectrograms and natural xray diffraction analysis so we can get a good idea of what may be "mine-able", as well, this may be a likely spot for a way station for ships en-route to the ibex ribbon.
"Stand by...initiating parallel sub-quantum matrix generator for time warp."
"The Holy Grail neath ancient Rosland waits.
The blde and chalice guarding all her gates.
...She rest's at last beneath starry skies"
She rest's at last beneath starry skies looking into the heaven's. Mary Queen of the Agamogenesian's what is that you see? What is a conduit like me supposed to the show them? Let me show them something Mary. Something that only your line would know of.
Slowly like the wisp of dream the stone face on the coffin of Mary begins to waver. The strong stone etchings replaced by the sublte and delicate face of Mary as she was the day she was laid to rest. Her eyes slowly open their soft and pale grey center telling story of truth and knowledge before them.
Here hands slowly unclasp from each other as she creates an orb before them. The smell of a homefire burning far away, the soft and gentle ebb of the wave as it retreats leaving a thousand points of starlight before me.
There not too far from the porthole I see a beauty yet aweful site. A large ice planet hurtling towards the Earth. Primordial Earth before humans were present when only the foundation of life was present in microbial form. The ice planet is not a whole planet however as it is only what appears to be half of less in it's volume. Like it was part of a larger planetary body that was broken in half by a great collison in space. Watch as the ice planet slowly drives towards the Earth. The icy planet entering the atmosphere begins to break apart due to friction. But instead of the fragments of ice merely disentigrating into nothing the heat vaporizes the trailing chunks of ice as it slames into the Gulf of Mexico Basin creating the atmosphere in part. The now imbedded ice planet begins to melt as the UV rays of the sun strike it's surface. Over time the empty and deep gullies that reside miles below the surface of the water that is present today filled with the melting ice planet. The composition of what the ice planet contained combined with the microbial's in the water to create new life. At these early shallow depths life spawned and was beautiful. Just a drop in the water creates a ripple of brilliance. Brilliant colored sea creatures swam freely. As more and more water melted and slowly filled the planet up the water crept into places that only it could carrying the seeds of life. The seeds of trees then raced skywards towards the Sun being nourished by the water from the icey planet that had crashed in the Gulf of Mexico's Basin. Chunks that broke off from the impact created smaller ocean's that eventually wore through the soil and created the continents that we see today as a result of erosion and tectonic plate shifting.
To find the actuall size of the icey planet all we have to do is figure up the total volume of water that is present on Earth and create a frozen sphere of the total volume of water and then add the other large ciey bodies orbiting Saturn such as Helene and Dion and the Trojan Four to build a model of an icy planet that brought both life and water to planet Earth.
That's not her, I've seen pictures of Michelle Bachman, and that's not her.
Just think of the new myth of the Women of the Trojan Four pouring water from their chalices over Hera's body bringing her and her children to life before the Universe.
And how much did we spend to get these pictures? Some times I wonder what N-A-S-A stands for?
Shut it down Mr President.
Your ignorance is staggering, go educate yourself on all the technology and other advancments that you use in your everyday life that are a direct result of space exploration. Until you do that your comment is nothing but a worthless fart in the wind.
By your comment it is obvious that you think the pursuit of knowledge and education is a waste of time and money.
Oak, How many times ya gonna cry that same old refrain? THE MONEY'S ALREADY SPENT!!!
Oaktree is obviously not a Star trek fan, a science fan, or an anything that lifts humanity out of the mud fan. A science grinch.
Now that we've captured the Ice Queen, we should waterboard her to learn what she knows. Oh wait, that won't work on her. Maybe just expose her to fire? See how tough she is once melting! She'll think twice when bound for my martini on the rocks, with her as the rocks, of course. An ignoble fate if there ever was for royalty.