Disappearing Rings of Saturn—History Repeating Itself
Listen to the sound of the rings on YouTube.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=38pJhxCzR-I)
In the year 1610, Galileo noticed through his spy glass, a current invention and modern miracle of the time, that the rings of Saturn were not there. Puzzled, he immediately wrote to his Medici patrons: “I found another very strange wonder, which I should like to make known to their Highnesses….”
He would know this, as Galileo Galilei was the very first astronaut to observe, with an extremely simple 20-power telescope, Saturn’s rings in the year 1610. He said, “I have observed the highest planet [Saturn] to be tripled-bodied. This is to say that to my very great amazement Saturn was seen to me to be not a single star, but three together, which almost touch each other.” But in 1610, these “handles”, or so he thought they were, had disappeared, making the famous Galileo—again the very first person– to observe a Saturn ring plane crossing, which is what is happing now.
The wide-open rings of Saturn have been amplified to a planet surrounded by sheer beauty, emitting a series of musical notes of exquisite harmony. Detected by the Cassini spacecraft in 2006, as it passed over the rings, Saturn’s tones were received as radio waves. These musical notes were later heard by Don Furnett of the University of Iowa, as his team reduced their frequency by a factor of five to hear them within the human hearing range, causing pure astonishment when the beautiful musical notes were heard. Now these rings are turning in the very same manner as for Galileo.
Every 14 or 15 years or so, as Saturn orbits around the sun, it will occasionally turn its rings edge-on to Earth. The reason they appear to disappear is because the rings are extremely thin, and when they tilt, they are just out of view for a short time. After awhile, this rotation will allow Earth to view it again. Made possible with the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, the Saturn imagery comes from two elements: the Cassini orbiter and the Huygens probe. This spacecraft is considered the most ambitious missions that have even been launched into space by NASA, capable of taking the most accurate measurements and detailed images of Saturn and its moons, in a variety of atmospheric conditions and light spectra. Able to seen in wavelengths of light and energy, the Cassini is considered more sensitive than the human body.
This entry was posted on Monday, March 17th, 2008 at 10:43 am and is filed under Mission History, Public Relations, Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
