Cassini’s last close look at Titan
The Cassini science team has released the last radar swath that the spacecraft will take of Titan, imaged on April 22.
You can see the full swath up close here. The image above is my crop of the section on the swath’s right portion, showing the shoreline of the hydrocarbon lake Ligeia Mare, where periodically an island has been seen by radar to intermittently appear and disappear.
No “island” feature was observed during this pass. Scientists continue to work on what the transient feature might have been, with waves and bubbles being two possibilities.
The fly-by also took the first, and last, depth measurement of 8 other lakes, finding that they all had the same depth, suggesting they are connected by an underground “water” table. In this case, it ain’t water, but liquid hydrocarbons like methane.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
The Cassini science team has released the last radar swath that the spacecraft will take of Titan, imaged on April 22.
You can see the full swath up close here. The image above is my crop of the section on the swath’s right portion, showing the shoreline of the hydrocarbon lake Ligeia Mare, where periodically an island has been seen by radar to intermittently appear and disappear.
No “island” feature was observed during this pass. Scientists continue to work on what the transient feature might have been, with waves and bubbles being two possibilities.
The fly-by also took the first, and last, depth measurement of 8 other lakes, finding that they all had the same depth, suggesting they are connected by an underground “water” table. In this case, it ain’t water, but liquid hydrocarbons like methane.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Looks like Gaul before Caesar.