PeterDarmady      

06-21-2011  07:12:33

Beautiful! But the first thing that springs to mind is how does the erosion occur? It reminds me very much of slab avalanches which occur here in Scotland. May I postulate, due to low gravity and fineness of particles, an electrostatic phenomenon which allows flows on shallow gradients?

PeterDarmady      

01-10-2011  06:45:14

Fabulous news re. funding and discoveries. Once again, can I thank you all on the team for making my lunchtimes exciting and for acting as ambassadors for your country. With regard to the Saturn North Pole hexagon, there appears to me to be a striking analogy with our jet streams (which have been causing so much joy to us iceclimbers here in Scotland). I suspect that similar strutures ie regular polygons exist on
gas giants and perhaps also the Sun. The class of the polygon would be a function of the objects size.
However, only a detailed polar orbit of said objects would reveal such structures.

PeterDarmady      

12-21-2009  05:55:12

Tethys looks as if it made of some kind of sponge - or sorbet! Now back on line and loving the images! Well done you guys!

PeterDarmady      

12-10-2009  06:11:38

Although I struggled to open the files (something has changed in the electrons' behaviour up here, the effort was worth it. Now I know where George Lucas filmed the opening sequence in The Empire strikes back. Planet Hoth is really Enceladus! And although I know intellectually that the imaging is performed from a scientific point of view, I cannot (and will not) ever see these images without a sense of wonder and joy! Keep up the good work.

PeterDarmady      

12-10-2009  06:11:38

Although I struggled to open the files (something has changed in the electrons' behaviour up here, the effort was worth it. Now I know where George Lucas filmed the opening sequence in The Empire strikes back. Planet Hoth is really Enceladus! And although I know intellectually that the imaging is performed from a scientific point of view, I cannot (and will not) ever see these images without a sense of wonder and joy! Keep up the good work.

PeterDarmady      

11-25-2009  03:16:39

Shannon (my student, 13 yo) thinks that the Northern Lights on Saturn are AMAZING!!!!! She has never seen anything like it! 472 images in 81 hrs, subtracting an entire planet - cool! Up here in the North of Scotland, the aurorae are quite something and have been seen 50 degrees south of the zenith. Keep up the good work!

PeterDarmady      

08-24-2009  06:01:56

When I was a child in the Far North of Scotland, my heroes were people like Feynman, Asimov, Sagan... Then you had some presidents culminating in GWB. I despaired of your great country which had led us in exploration of space, literature and thought and was falling into the witchcraft of fundamentalism, unreason and creationism. Now, through the triumphs of the Mars rovers and Cassini I can hope again that maybe the US can lead by example and not descending into the anarchy of Rogue State.