farric@peoplepc.com      

2009-11-28 23:05:12

Another amazing capture of Nature's electromagnetic dance. Thank you, Carolyn Porco and your team. You keep topping your previous achievements. Robert Riccardi, M.D.

IVAN3MAN      

2009-09-24 01:57:19

Dr. Carolyn Porco, will you please refrain from using the terms "believed" and "belief" in a scientific context. Only ancient peoples and bloody freaking creationists have 'beliefs'! Real scientists do not 'believe' or have 'beliefs'; instead, they hypothesize or have hypotheses; they conjecture, surmise, speculate, presume, or infer. Finally, when the facts are known, it then becomes an established theory. The English language has no shortage of suitable words to use in a scientific context, so there's no bloody excuse for using 'weak' words. Thank you. P.S. The Bad Astronomer, Dr. Phil Plait, will confirm that I am a nitpicker!

NeKto      

2008-11-26 09:33:05

i just read the Scientific American article. i can enthusiasticly recomend it. a very good presentation of what is known and is not known about the enigmatic little moon. and a good presentation on what the energy source might be and why some hypothesis have been eliminated. sometimes the best moments in science are when a great big question mark is uncovered. i think this is one of those moments. Great article Carolyn. thank you. (there is even a small photo of Carolyn Porco with a blue eyed friend.)

vista      

2008-10-29 18:18:40

I really like this image of Saturn and its edge on rings. I am also really looking fordward to the next flyby of Enceladus, Saturn moon on Oct 31st 2008. I want to see the [trenches or tiger stripes] again to see if any thing has changed since the last flyby. Go Cassini. I will expect another great success. Carolyn Porco will be as excited as i am to see the first images on Oct 31st, coming back to Earth.

NeKto      

2008-08-13 12:41:14

Understatement; "Damn, we do good work!" Carolyn Porco 12 August 2008

Jay55      

2008-08-07 02:31:56

Saturn has always been my favourite planet since I was 11yrs old when I first looked at it through a telscope. You never forget that. I couldn't sleep for hours that night after that. The beauty of Saturn lends itself to beautiful music, but what is beautiful music is often a matter of opinion. I agree with Kevin just play your own and what you think is beautiful. If Aliens landed in front of me one day and offered me a ride somewhere in their spaceship I would have to say "Take me to Saturn, Titan and Enceladus please". Do you think thats asking too much? I might be pushing it too if could ask if I could bring Carolyn Porco with me because i have a feeling she would appreciate it. Jason (Sydney)

cmckay      

2008-03-30 17:23:57

Hello, new to this site at the invitation of Carolyn Porco. Looking at the interesting discussion and one area that I can comment on is the methane. While it is true that methane can form as a breakdown product of organics at high temperature it can also be formed biologically. It is interesting that the microbial ecosystem on Earth that is my favorite candidate for an ecosystem on either Europa or Enceladus is based on methanogens. The usual way to tell biogenic from abiogenic methane is with isotopes - not an option on Cassini. However the ratio of ethane to methane is another way. Biogenic production of methane tends to be pretty pure methane while thermogenic production of methane make 1% or more ethane as well.

cosmicguy      

2007-08-26 12:43:42

I just interviewed Carolyn Porco Aug 16th at Spacefest 2007. She has a wealth of information about her team and their explorations of Saturn and her Moons! She also gave a fantastic talk on Cassini and Saturn, and a great slide show as well! It was a pleasure meeting her and chatting with her throughout the weekend!

carolyn      

2010-07-12 19:03:51

MarkG: That would be wonderful if it did, because we predicted it should. See Porco et al, Science, 2007 at: http://www.ciclops.org/sci/papers.php

carolyn      

2010-02-16 20:09:09

Those of you who are interested to know how small satellites like Calypso come to have the shapes that they do should look at the Porco et al. (2007) paper on http://ciclops.org/sci/papers.php . (Look at the top of the list under 2007). In that paper we show that the shapes of the small sats near to the rings were likely due to accretion of ring material; for the inner most ones very close to the rings, the accretion must have occurred around a dense shard. For the outer small sats, like Calypso, within the region of the bigger moons, the formation process is less evident from their shape. But its surface shows how it has accumulated material. in any case, looks like the head of a fish (pointing to the left), doesn't it?