Electric Saturn

[mharratsc]

Is it just me, or does it sound like all of a sudden NASA is doing research into solar/planetary plasma dynamics like they've always been investigating EM dynamics of these bodies since 'way back when'?

No articles that I've seen have stated where they even began to think that it might be important to investigate this stuff, or that 'some recent discovery' made them think it might be important to look at! They just seem to be doing these investigations spontaneously out of the blue!

Good thing we've got all of this stuff on the forums, the various web pages, and we have the Predictions page posted! Methinks these clowns are starting down the "We knew it all along!" path, and will start claiming they were the first to have deduced and proven all this stuff before long.


Mike H.

[flyingcloud]

sounds to me that with different rotational rates between hemispheres Saturn should be twisted to the core

[redeye]

NASA Extends Cassini's Tour of Saturn, Continuing International Cooperation for World Class Science

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA will extend the international Cassini-Huygens mission to explore Saturn and its moons to 2017. The agency's fiscal year 2011 budget provides a $60 million per year extension for continued study of the ringed planet.

"This is a mission that never stops providing us surprising scientific results and showing us eye popping new vistas," said Jim Green, director of NASA's planetary science division at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The historic traveler's stunning discoveries and images have revolutionized our knowledge of Saturn and its moons."

Cassini launched in October 1997 with the European Space Agency's Huygens probe. The spacecraft arrived at Saturn in 2004. The probe was equipped with six instruments to study Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Cassini's 12 instruments have returned a daily stream of data from Saturn's system for nearly six years. The project was scheduled to end in 2008, but the mission received a 27-month extension to Sept. 2010.

"The extension presents a unique opportunity to follow seasonal changes of an outer planet system all the way from its winter to its summer," said Bob Pappalardo, Cassini project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Some of Cassini's most exciting discoveries still lie ahead."

This second extension, called the Cassini Solstice Mission, enables scientists to study seasonal and other long-term weather changes on the planet and its moons. Cassini arrived just after Saturn's northern winter solstice, and this extension continues until a few months past northern summer solstice in May 2017. The northern summer solstice marks the beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere and winter in the southern hemisphere.


The 2010 Saturn Tour Highlights lists some close flyby plans for 2010.
A complete seasonal period on Saturn has never been studied at this level of detail. The Solstice mission schedule calls for an additional 155 orbits around the planet, 54 flybys of Titan and 11 flybys of the icy moon Enceladus.
The mission extension also will allow scientists to continue observations of Saturn's rings and the magnetic bubble around the planet known as the magnetosphere. The spacecraft will make repeated dives between Saturn and its rings to obtain in depth knowledge of the gas giant. During these dives, the spacecraft will study the internal structure of Saturn, its magnetic fluctuations and ring mass.

The mission will be evaluated periodically to ensure the spacecraft has the ability to achieve new science objectives for the entire extension.

"The spacecraft is doing remarkably well, even as we endure the expected effects of age after logging 2.6 billion miles on its odometer," said Bob Mitchell, Cassini program manager at JPL. "This extension is important because there is so much still to be learned at Saturn. The planet is full of secrets, and it doesn't give them up easily."

Cassini's travel scrapbook includes more than 210,000 images; information gathered during more than 125 revolutions around Saturn; 67 flybys of Titan and eight close flybys of Enceladus. Cassini has revealed unexpected details in the planet's signature rings, and observations of Titan have given scientists a glimpse of what Earth might have been like before life evolved.

Scientists hope to learn answers to many questions that have developed during the course of the mission, including why Saturn seems to have an inconsistent rotation rate and how a probable subsurface ocean feeds the Enceladus' jets.

Cheers!

[redeye]

Cassini Top 10 Science Highlights -- 2009

Cheers!

[FS3]

At the time when Hubble's ACS shot this new picture, Saturn was approaching its equinox so both poles were equally illuminated and the planet was almost rectangular towards Hubble's position.



From http://www.spacetelescope.org/news/html/heic1003.html

...At first glance the light show of Saturn's aurorae appears symmetric at the two poles. However, analysing the new data in greater detail, astronomers have discovered some subtle differences between the northern and southern aurorae, which reveal important information about Saturn's magnetic field. The northern auroral oval is slightly smaller and more intense than the southern one, implying that Saturn’s magnetic field is not equally distributed across the planet; it is slightly uneven and stronger in the north than the south...

Watch the heightened appearances of the aurorae! ACS provides enhanced viewing capabilities both in UV and IR spectrae.

FS3

[MrAmsterdam]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2010-090

In the review paper on Saturn's atmosphere, ionosphere and magnetosphere, lead author Tamas Gombosi, Cassini's interdisciplinary scientist for magnetosphere and plasma science who is based at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, describes how Cassini helped scientists understand a south polar vortex that has a diameter 20 to 40 times that of a terrestrial hurricane, and the bizarrely stable hexagon-shaped jet stream at the planet's north pole. Cassini scientists have also calculated a variation in Saturn's wind speeds at different altitudes and latitudes that is 10 times greater than the wind speed variation on Earth.

According to Gombosi's paper, Cassini has also shown us that the small moon Enceladus, not the sun or Saturn's largest moon Titan, is the biggest contributor of charged particles to Saturn's magnetic environment. The charged particles from Enceladus, a moon that features a plume of water vapor and other gases spraying from its south polar region, also contribute to the auroras around the poles of the planet.

"We learned from Cassini that the Saturnian magnetosphere is swimming in water," Gombosi said. "This is unique in the solar system and makes Saturn's plasma environment particularly fascinating."

Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/
The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org/?js=1

Way to go Professor Tamas Gombosi!

By studying Saturn's plasma environment we will understand our Earth's geocorona much better...

One question though...where are our Birkeland currents...?

[The Great Dog]

Here they are:

Space Tornadoes Cause a Stir

TGD

[MrAmsterdam]

Here they are:

Space Tornadoes Cause a Stir

TGD

Isnt that a wrong picture? I thought the two vortices or birkeland currents would twist and turn arround eachother?
That picture is too neat and clean....no?

Great Dog, Mr Amsterdam did send an email today to the leading scientist pointing out to similarities of Birkeland currents in our solar system on different planets and suggesting looking for one on Saturn . I do hope he reads it.

[FS3]

What has been labeled by NASA as "bizarre" might be just another clue of an electric interaction. Saturn's moon Mimas - the one with the hexagonale Herschel Crater - shows an unusual temperatur profile:



What NASA calles Bizarre Temperatures on Mimas is indeed telling! The pattern of daytime temperatures found on Saturn's small inner moon looks like a cosmic "pac-man".

Another bite at the gravitational Universe?

...The upper right image in the annotated version shows the completely different pattern that Cassini actually saw. Instead of the expected smoothly varying temperatures, this side of Mimas is divided into a warm part (on the left) and a cold part (on the right) with a sharp, v-shaped boundary between them. The warm part has typical temperatures near 92 Kelvin (minus 294 Fahrenheit), while typical temperatures on the cold part are about 77 Kelvin (minus 320 Fahrenheit). The cold part is probably colder because surface materials there have a greater thermal conductivity, so the sun's energy soaks into the subsurface instead of warming the surface itself. But why conductivity should vary so dramatically across the surface of Mimas is a mystery...

The strange pattern of the colder parts of the surface includes the giant Herschel Crater, which is a few degrees warmer than its surroundings. According to NASA "it's not yet known whether Herschel is responsible in some way for the larger region of cold temperatures that surrounds it."

Anyway, the attempt to explain away the strange pattern by different surface structures or material doesn't seem very conclusive as the sharp border line between cold and warm defies any visible structures on Mimas as you can see by the picture of the "visible light-map".

If we suggest that Herschl has been indeed the footprint of an electric interaction, could it be that this huge discharge has altered the conductivity of Mimas around the point of impact - therfore giving the material a saturation of further electron-conducting capabilities?

Any more ideas?

FS3

[redeye]

Tethys and Dione were both found to exhibit "plumes" similar to Enceladus. Could this strange temperature feature on Mimas be evidence of a similar process?

Cheers!

[redeye]

Or perhaps they were firing up their big laser beam to destroy Alderaan!

Cheers!

[Siggy_G]

This is slightly old news, but has it been discussed here? What is the EU approach to the hexagonal shape of the atmospheric layers at the north pole?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzL194jiTyY

[MrAmsterdam]

I'm sure this is discussed before.

ill go with empirical evidence any time;

Polygons on a Rotating Fluid Surface
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0511251

If this phenomena takes place in fluid, maybe in takes place in gas too...

it leaves the following question unanswered though....where does the input energy of high speed rotation coming from?

[Ion01]

It has to do with the inflow of electricity through the poles just like the polar lights on earth. The shape is due to the stability of current filaments.

Here is an article on saturns pole: http://www.thunderbolts.info/webnews/040907hexagon.htm

Here is an article to help you understand the current filaments and thier stable forms: http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=re6qxnz1

Here is a thread about hexigonal hurricane eyes: http://www.thunderbolts.info/forum/phpB ... 983&p=9819

Also, I am not sure how familiar you are with hexigon craters but looking into those as well would help add to your understanding of this feature. They are everywhere....I have even photographed numerous ones on the moon!

Here is a article addressing saturns poles: http://www.holoscience.com/news.php?article=66b0jzyh

Here is a link to a forum discussing hexigon craters which includes some of my pictures of them on the moon:viewtopic.php?p=1940&sid=2b3686badde404 ... f35e43ceaf

Hope all that helps!

[Ion01]

I'm sure this is discussed before.

ill go with empirical evidence any time;

Polygons on a Rotating Fluid Surface
http://arxiv.org/abs/physics/0511251

If this phenomena takes place in fluid, maybe in takes place in gas too...

it leaves the following question unanswered though....where does the input energy of high speed rotation coming from?

Although interesting it doesn't suffice as an explanation of saturns pole for several reasons. If I recall, the patterns in the experiment are a result of vibrations from the rotating plate which they cannot equate to a similar mechanism on a planet.(feel free to correct me if I am recalling that incorrectly) The other huge reason it that it does not show any of the other patterns and features of saturns pole such as the many different circles of flow which flow at different speeds and such. It doesn't show the correlation between the hexigon and auroras as seen here: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassi ... 09185.html