Cassi Creek:
Half an inch
of rain between 1630 and 1730 yesterday.
Lots of local flash flooding for the second straight day. We remain fortunate. Cassi Creek remains clear and within its
banks.
Today and tomorrow,
present a rare opportunity to become part of a NASA project involving the
Cassini Solstice mission. http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/
As the planet Saturn eclipses Cassini’s view of the sun,
photographs and other imagery will be collected and forwarded to NASA. It is expected that a very distant image of
Earth will be captured. So, go out and
wave to Saturn.
You should
present your smiling faces between 1847 and 1901 EDT. If you wish, you can obtain a certificate
documenting your participation in the Cassini Solstice project.
For those of you who don’t have the photo/imaging capability
to shoot your own Saturn studies, here are some great links from NASA dating
from 2006.
It remains hard for
most of us to comprehend the immense distances between the sun and the various
planetary components of our solar system.
“Cassini launched in
October 1997 with the European Space Agency's Huygens probe. The probe was
equipped with six instruments to study Titan, Saturn's largest moon. It landed
on Titan's surface on Jan. 14, 2005, and returned spectacular results.”
“Cassini completed its initial four-year
mission to explore the Saturn System in June 2008 and the first extended
mission, called the Cassini Equinox Mission, in September 2010. Now, the
healthy spacecraft is seeking to make exciting new discoveries in a second
extended mission called the Cassini Solstice Mission.
The mission’s extension, which goes
through September 2017, is named for the Saturnian summer solstice occurring in
May 2017. The northern summer solstice marks the beginning of summer in the
northern hemisphere and winter in the southern hemisphere. Since Cassini
arrived at Saturn just
after the planet's northern winter solstice, the extension will allow for the
first study of a complete seasonal period…”
The Los Angeles Times has a very good article about the
Saturn imagery.
Looking sunward from Saturn, the sun is greatly diminished
in size and intensity. Our badly abused
and over-populated planet is barely visible with the longest of lenses, the
best of filters, and the aid of computers to locate it.
Looking in the other direction, beyond the rocks and ice
that make up the Kuipfer Belt. The
Voyager missions were launched in 1977 and still function as designed. Their mission has been extended and they now
travel through the Heliosphere, at the extreme edge of the beginnings of
interstellar space. At their distance
from the sun, it is a pale small glint among the rest of the stars. It calls to mine the closing lines of Cisco
Houston’s “Way Out There.”
“The twin Voyager 1 and
2 spacecraft continue exploring where nothing from Earth has flown before. In
the 36th year after their 1977 launches, they each are much farther away from
Earth and the Sun than Pluto. Voyager 1 and 2 are now in the
"Heliosheath" - the outermost layer of the heliosphere where the
solar wind is slowed by the pressure of interstellar gas. Both spacecraft are
still sending scientific information about their surroundings through the Deep
Space Network (DSN).
The primary mission
was the exploration of Jupiter and Saturn. After making a string of discoveries
there -- such as active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io and intricacies of
Saturn's rings -- the mission was extended. Voyager 2 went on to explore Uranus
and Neptune, and is still the only spacecraft to have visited those outer
planets. The adventurers' current mission, the Voyager Interstellar Mission
(VIM), will explore the outermost edge of the Sun's domain. And beyond.
Interstellar
Mission
Interstellar Mission.
› larger image
Mission
Objective
The mission objective
of the Voyager Interstellar Mission (VIM) is to extend the NASA exploration of
the solar system beyond the neighborhood of the outer planets to the outer
limits of the Sun's sphere of influence, and possibly beyond. This extended
mission is continuing to characterize the outer solar system environment and
search for the heliopause boundary, the outer limits of the Sun's magnetic
field and outward flow of the solar wind. Penetration of the heliopause
boundary between the solar wind and the interstellar medium will allow
measurements to be made of the interstellar fields, particles and waves
unaffected by the solar wind. “
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