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[apod]

2025 January 24

Comet G3 ATLAS: a Tail and a Telescope Image Credit & Copyright: Yuri Beletsky (Carnegie Las Campanas Observatory, TWAN)

Explanation: Comet C/2024 G3 ATLAS has made a dramatic appearance in planet Earth’s skies. A visitor from the distant Oort Cloud, the comet reached its perihelion on January 13. On January 19, the bright comet was captured here from ESO Paranal Observatory in the Atacama desert in Chile. Sporting spectacular sweeping dust tails, this comet ATLAS is setting in the southern hemisphere twilight and was clearly visible to the unaided eye. In the foreground is the closed shell of one of the observatory’s famous auxiliary telescopes. Still wowing southern hemisphere observers, the comet’s bright coma has become diffuse, its icy nucleus apparently disintegrating following its close approach to the Sun.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250124.html

[letsbelonelytogetherr]

— Khalil Gibran

[demidiabolicaldiabetic-deactiva]

Holdin out for this.

[perfectquote]

“I’m still learning to love the parts of me that no one claps for.”

— Rudy Francisco

[letsbelonelytogetherr]

— Khalil Gibran

[demidiabolicaldiabetic-deactiva]

Holdin out for this.

[itssaturntime]

[apod]

2025 January 19

Titan Touchdown: Huygens Descent Movie Video Credit: ESA, NASA, JPL, U. Arizona, E. Karkoschka

Explanation: What would it look like to land on Saturn’s moon Titan? The European Space Agency’s Huygens probe set down on the Solar System’s cloudiest moon in 2005, and a time-lapse video of its descent images was created. Huygens separated from the robotic Cassini spacecraft soon after it achieved orbit around Saturn in late 2004 and began approaching Titan. For two hours after arriving, Huygens plummeted toward Titan’s surface, recording at first only the shrouded moon’s opaque atmosphere. The computerized truck-tire sized probe soon deployed a parachute to slow its descent, pierced the thick clouds, and began transmitting images of a strange surface far below never before seen in visible light. Landing in a dried sea and surviving for 90 minutes, Huygen’s returned unique images of a strange plain of dark sandy soil strewn with smooth, bright, fist-sized rocks of ice.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250119.html

[thepersonalquotes]

[livingforstars]

Titania's Trenches - January 11th, 1997.

"British astronomer Sir William Herschel discovered Titania and Oberon in 1787. He wasn't reading Shakespeare's 'A Midsummer Night's Dream' though, he was making the first telescopic observations of moons of the planet Uranus (a planet which he himself discovered in 1781). On January 24th, 1986, NASA's robot explorer Voyager 2 became the only spacecraft to visit the remote Uranian system. Above is Voyager's picture of Titania, Uranus' largest moon - a composite of two images recorded from a distance of 229,000 miles. The icy, rocky world is seen to be covered with impact craters. A prominent system of fault valleys, some nearly 1,000 miles long, are visible as trench-like features near the terminator (shadow line). Deposits of highly reflective material, which may represent frost, can be seen along the Sun-facing valley walls. The large impact crater near the top, known as Gertrude, is about 180 miles across. At the bottom the 60 mile wide fault valley, Belmont Chasma, cuts into crater Ursula. Titania itself is 1,000 miles in diameter."

[thepersonalquotes]

[nostalgia-curator]

Note to self.

[thepersonalquotes]

[nostalgia-curator]

Note to self.

[itssaturntime]

How Many Moons Does Saturn Have?

In recent years, Saturn has overtaken Jupiter as the planet with the most satellites in our solar system. How many moons does Saturn have?

[itssaturntime]

Sunrise on Titan. Description from Future Life #18, May 1980 reads: "Don Dixon's portrait of Saturn as seen from the surface of its largest moon. Dixon is well known for the care and research he puts into his astronomical art, going by known scientific facts, he gives us a view of space that most of us will never see in person.

Copyright: Jim Bower

[apod]

2025 January 12

Mimas: Small Moon with a Big Crater Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Space Science Institute, Cassini

Explanation: Whatever hit Mimas nearly destroyed it. What remains is one of the largest impact craters on one of Saturn’s smallest round moons. Analysis indicates that a slightly larger impact would have destroyed Mimas entirely. The huge crater, named Herschel after the 1789 discoverer of Mimas, Sir William Herschel, spans about 130 kilometers and is featured here. Mimas’ low mass produces a surface gravity just strong enough to create a spherical body but weak enough to allow such relatively large surface features. Mimas is made of mostly water ice with a smattering of rock - so it is accurately described as a big dirty snowball. The featured image was taken during the closest-ever flyby of the robot spacecraft Cassini past Mimas in 2010 while in orbit around Saturn.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250112.html

[awidevastdominion]

Rhea, Saturn's second largest moon.

[apod]

2025 January 12

Mimas: Small Moon with a Big Crater Image Credit: NASA, JPL-Caltech, Space Science Institute, Cassini

Explanation: Whatever hit Mimas nearly destroyed it. What remains is one of the largest impact craters on one of Saturn’s smallest round moons. Analysis indicates that a slightly larger impact would have destroyed Mimas entirely. The huge crater, named Herschel after the 1789 discoverer of Mimas, Sir William Herschel, spans about 130 kilometers and is featured here. Mimas’ low mass produces a surface gravity just strong enough to create a spherical body but weak enough to allow such relatively large surface features. Mimas is made of mostly water ice with a smattering of rock - so it is accurately described as a big dirty snowball. The featured image was taken during the closest-ever flyby of the robot spacecraft Cassini past Mimas in 2010 while in orbit around Saturn.

∞ Source: apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap250112.html

[itssaturntime]

Rafeeq O. McGiveron  · January 5 at 4:55 AM  · 

I don't have a lot of art-art, which is good, because I don't have much space for display. But here is the Art Corner by my desk--clockwise from top, Ron Miller's Saturn Seen from Mimas, 2022; Robert Breck, reproduced between pages 148 and 149 of the 1948 Fantasy House printing of Heinlein's Beyond This Horizon; Jim Burns's 1997 Genesis, which was the cover of Scott Siegel's 1998 Tales from Tethedril; and Steele Savage's Time for the Stars, cover of the 1971 Ace paperback of Heinlein's 1956 juvie.

[itssaturntime]

"Rafeeq O. McGiveron  · January 5 at 4:55 AM  · 

I don't have a lot of art-art, which is good, because I don't have much space for display. But here is the Art Corner by my desk--clockwise from top, Ron Miller's Saturn Seen from Mimas, 2022; Robert Breck, reproduced between pages 148 and 149 of the 1948 Fantasy House printing of Heinlein's Beyond This Horizon; Jim Burns's 1997 Genesis, which was the cover of Scott Siegel's 1998 Tales from Tethedril; and Steele Savage's Time for the Stars, cover of the 1971 Ace paperback of Heinlein's 1956 juvie.