Music.
Andy Ingersoll: Hi, I’m Andy Ingersoll, a member of the Cassini imaging team.
Cassini has been in orbit around Saturn for 9 years and we’ve been following this hexagon which surrounds the north pole.
It’s bigger than 2 Earths, and it’s a wandering jet stream.
But it’s been winter in the north. So we have not been able to see what’s at the center of the hexagon.
But now it’s spring. And what we’ve found at the center of the hexagon is a Saturn hurricane.
This is a view from directly over the north pole, which is made possible by the orbit of the spacecraft which is now taking us over the pole.
The winds are flowing at 300 miles an hour, which is 4 times hurricane force.
The fluffy white clouds in the center are about the size of Texas.
We can use special filters to measure the heights of the clouds.
The red are low clouds and the green are high clouds.
We call it a Saturn hurricane because it has the eye, it has the high winds, but it’s different from an Earth hurricane because it’s locked to the north pole.
And unlike a terrestrial hurricane there’s no ocean underneath.
And that’s one of the puzzles we’re trying to figure out.
Music.
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology
Solar Flare
Blue dot
Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there–on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
― Carl Sagan
Distant Stars
For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us.
The path of a cosmonaut is not an easy, triumphant march to glory. You have to get to know the meaning not just of joy but also of grief, before being allowed in the spacecraft cabin.
Many say exploration is part of our destiny, but it’s actually our duty to future generations and their quest to ensure the survival of the human species.
The sky is the limit only for those who aren’t afraid to fly! Buy why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may as well ask why climb the highest mountain?
We are all connected; To each other, biologically. To the earth, chemically. To the rest of the universe atomically. If you could see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more splendid than the moon.
We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win.
Failure is not an option.
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.
There can be no thought of finishing for ‘aiming for the stars.’ Both figuratively and literally, it is a task to occupy the generations. And no matter how much progress one makes, there is always the thrill of just beginning.
The dreams of yesterday are the hopes of today and the reality of tomorrow.
We want to explore. We’re curious people. Look back over history, people have put their lives at stake to go out and explore … We believe in what we’re doing.
Now it’s time to go.
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My Top 10 Favorite Sci-Fi Films
Another difficulty would be to navigate the spacecraft to the target galaxy and succeed in reaching a chosen star, planet or other body, as this would require a full understanding of the movement of galaxies which has not yet been attained.
Communication and one-way trip
There is also the considerable problem, even for unmanned probes, that any communication between the craft and its home planet can still only travel at the speed of light, which may require millions of years to traverse the colossal distances involved. Even if another galaxy could be reached, there seems to be no way for the information to be transmitted home in any meaningful way.
Nearest galaxies
Our galaxy, the Milky Way, lies within a group of galaxies called the Local Group. The two diagrams below show the part of it that lies within 500 thousand light-years, and the entire Local Group.
Taking Shape
Things are starting to take shape around here. I hope you’re liking this theme!
Lorem Ipsum
Martin: What’s with all the strange looking words on some of these posts and pages?
Julius: It’s Latin.
Martin: Ah. Do you read Latin?
Julius: Not a word.
Martin: That’s pretty weird then, isn’t it?
Julius: Nope, it’s just there as filler text.
Martin: Like breadcrumbs in meatloaf.
Julius: Sort of, I guess. 🙂
