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Rings - Blog Posts
A plethora of rings! Also experimenting with how I want to draw hands. 😁
i’ve realized tumblr is probably not the best place to promote things but i’ve added 3 more cuties to my shop!! it would mean so much if you took a glance at my shop or even share this!
i’m currently in between jobs and my shop has become my main source of income, so i’m working extra hard to get new things out when I can!
I’m also running a sale this weekend for my birthday so keep an eye out!
shop my etsy here
♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎♡︎♥︎
i want chunky rings and baggy tops
they are life, they are everything
Merry Christmas!!!
Alternate Hats Below!!:
@ratseathumans @zuicidegay @vuvvishere
I see da tag game, now I make a tag game :D
🩷🤍🩷🤍🩷🤍🩷
Go on pinterest, search your favorite of these things:
Favorite cartoon character (or favorite currently)
Favorite Musical
Favourite thing about the 90s
Favorite Color
Favorite fashion item
Favorite Movie
Favorite hobby
Favorite food
Favorite book
In an aesthic type, and use one of the first images you see! I'll start:
@ratseathumans @mentally-tori-261 @highclasshomosexual @kokichighost143 @somesouthparkfan23 @universecitizen432 @pxrfaitgirlz @pessimisticbreadslice (anyone can play thou lol)
Ultra-Close Orbits of Saturn = Ultra-Cool Science
On Sept. 15, 2017, our Cassini spacecraft ended its epic exploration of Saturn with a planned dive into the planet’s atmosphere–sending back new science to the very last second. The spacecraft is gone, but the science continues!
New research emerging from the final orbits represents a huge leap forward in our understanding of the Saturn system -- especially the mysterious, never-before-explored region between the planet and its rings. Some preconceived ideas are turning out to be wrong while new questions are being raised. How did they form? What holds them in place? What are they made of?
Six teams of researchers are publishing their work Oct. 5 in the journal Science, based on findings from Cassini's Grand Finale. That's when, as the spacecraft was running out of fuel, the mission team steered Cassini spectacularly close to Saturn in 22 orbits before deliberately vaporizing it in a final plunge into the atmosphere in September 2017.
Knowing Cassini's days were numbered, its mission team went for gold. The spacecraft flew where it was never designed to fly. For the first time, it probed Saturn's magnetized environment, flew through icy, rocky ring particles and sniffed the atmosphere in the 1,200-mile-wide (2,000-kilometer-wide) gap between the rings and the cloud tops. Not only did the engineering push the spacecraft to its limits, the new findings illustrate how powerful and agile the instruments were.
Many more Grand Finale science results are to come, but today's highlights include:
Complex organic compounds embedded in water nanograins rain down from Saturn's rings into its upper atmosphere. Scientists saw water and silicates, but they were surprised to see also methane, ammonia, carbon monoxide, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. The composition of organics is different from that found on moon Enceladus – and also different from those on moon Titan, meaning there are at least three distinct reservoirs of organic molecules in the Saturn system.
For the first time, Cassini saw up close how rings interact with the planet and observed inner-ring particles and gases falling directly into the atmosphere. Some particles take on electric charges and spiral along magnetic-field lines, falling into Saturn at higher latitudes -- a phenomenon known as "ring rain." But scientists were surprised to see that others are dragged quickly into Saturn at the equator. And it's all falling out of the rings faster than scientists thought -- as much as 10,000 kg of material per second.
Scientists were surprised to see what the material looks like in the gap between the rings and Saturn's atmosphere. They knew that the particles throughout the rings ranged from large to small. They thought material in the gap would look the same. But the sampling showed mostly tiny, nanograin- and micron-sized particles, like smoke, telling us that some yet-unknown process is grinding up particles. What could it be? Future research into the final bits of data sent by Cassini may hold the answer.
Saturn and its rings are even more interconnected than scientists thought. Cassini revealed a previously unknown electric current system that connects the rings to the top of Saturn's atmosphere.
Scientists discovered a new radiation belt around Saturn, close to the planet and composed of energetic particles. They found that while the belt actually intersects with the innermost ring, the ring is so tenuous that it doesn’t block the belt from forming.
Unlike every other planet with a magnetic field in our Solar System, Saturn's magnetic field is almost completely aligned with its spin axis. Think of the planet and the magnetic field as completely separate things that are both spinning. Both have the same center point, but they each have their own axis about which they spin. But for Saturn the two axes are essentially the same – no other planet does that, and we did not think it was even possible for this to happen. This new data shows a magnetic-field tilt of less than 0.0095 degrees. (Earth's magnetic field is tilted 11 degrees from its spin axis.) According to everything scientists know about how planetary magnetic fields are generated, Saturn should not have one. It's a mystery physicists will be working to solve.
Cassini flew above Saturn's magnetic poles, directly sampling regions where radio emissions are generated. The findings more than doubled the number of reported crossings of radio sources from the planet, one of the few non-terrestrial locations where scientists have been able to study a mechanism believed to operate throughout the universe. How are these signals generated? That’s still a mystery researchers are looking to uncover.
For the Cassini mission, the science rolling out from Grand Finale orbits confirms that the calculated risk of diving into the gap -- skimming the upper atmosphere and skirting the edge of the inner rings -- was worthwhile.
Almost everything going on in that region turned out to be a surprise, which was the importance of going there, to explore a place we'd never been before. And the expedition really paid off!
Analysis of Cassini data from the spacecraft’s instruments will be ongoing for years to come, helping to paint a clearer picture of Saturn.
To read the papers published in Science, visit: URL to papers
To learn more about the ground-breaking Cassini mission and its 13 years at Saturn, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/main/index.html
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Cassini Spacecraft: Top Discoveries
Our Cassini spacecraft has been exploring Saturn, its stunning rings and its strange and beautiful moons for more than a decade.
Having expended almost every bit of the rocket propellant it carried to Saturn, operators are deliberately plunging Cassini into the planet to ensure Saturn’s moons will remain pristine for future exploration – in particular, the ice-covered, ocean-bearing moon Enceladus, but also Titan, with its intriguing pre-biotic chemistry.
Let’s take a look back at some of Cassini’s top discoveries:
Titan
Under its shroud of haze, Saturn’s planet-sized moon Titan hides dunes, mountains of water ice and rivers and seas of liquid methane. Of the hundreds of moons in our solar system, Titan is the only one with a dense atmosphere and large liquid reservoirs on its surface, making it in some ways more like a terrestrial planet.
Both Earth and Titan have nitrogen-dominated atmospheres – over 95% nitrogen in Titan’s case. However, unlike Earth, Titan has very little oxygen; the rest of the atmosphere is mostly methane and traced amounts of other gases, including ethane.
There are three large seas, all located close to the moon’s north pole, surrounded by numerous smaller lakes in the northern hemisphere. Just one large lake has been found in the southern hemisphere.
Enceladus
The moon Enceladus conceals a global ocean of salty liquid water beneath its icy surface. Some of that water even shoots out into space, creating an immense plume!
For decades, scientists didn’t know why Enceladus was the brightest world in the solar system, or how it related to Saturn’s E ring. Cassini found that both the fresh coating on its surface, and icy material in the E ring originate from vents connected to a global subsurface saltwater ocean that might host hydrothermal vents.
With its global ocean, unique chemistry and internal heat, Enceladus has become a promising lead in our search for worlds where life could exist.
Iapetus
Saturn’s two-toned moon Iapetus gets its odd coloring from reddish dust in its orbital path that is swept up and lands on the leading face of the moon.
The most unique, and perhaps most remarkable feature discovered on Iapetus in Cassini images is a topographic ridge that coincides almost exactly with the geographic equator. The physical origin of the ridge has yet to be explained...
It is not yet year whether the ridge is a mountain belt that has folded upward, or an extensional crack in the surface through which material from inside Iapetus erupted onto the surface and accumulated locally.
Saturn’s Rings
Saturn’s rings are made of countless particles of ice and dust, which Saturn’s moons push and tug, creating gaps and waves.
Scientists have never before studied the size, temperature, composition and distribution of Saturn’s rings from Saturn obit. Cassini has captured extraordinary ring-moon interactions, observed the lowest ring-temperature ever recorded at Saturn, discovered that the moon Enceladus is the source for Saturn’s E ring, and viewed the rings at equinox when sunlight strikes the rings edge-on, revealing never-before-seen ring features and details.
Cassini also studied features in Saturn’s rings called “spokes,” which can be longer than the diameter of Earth. Scientists think they’re made of thin icy particles that are lifted by an electrostatic charge and only last a few hours.
Auroras
The powerful magnetic field that permeates Saturn is strange because it lines up with the planet’s poles. But just like Earth’s field, it all creates shimmering auroras.
Auroras on Saturn occur in a process similar to Earth’s northern and southern lights. Particles from the solar wind are channeled by Saturn’s magnetic field toward the planet’s poles, where they interact with electrically charged gas (plasma) in the upper atmosphere and emit light.
Turbulent Atmosphere
Saturn’s turbulent atmosphere churns with immense storms and a striking, six-sided jet stream near its north pole.
Saturn’s north and south poles are also each beautifully (and violently) decorated by a colossal swirling storm. Cassini got an up-close look at the north polar storm and scientists found that the storm’s eye was about 50 times wider than an Earth hurricane’s eye.
Unlike the Earth hurricanes that are driven by warm ocean waters, Saturn’s polar vortexes aren’t actually hurricanes. They’re hurricane-like though, and even contain lightning. Cassini’s instruments have ‘heard’ lightning ever since entering Saturn orbit in 2004, in the form of radio waves. But it wasn’t until 2009 that Cassini’s cameras captured images of Saturnian lighting for the first time.
Cassini scientists assembled a short video of it, the first video of lightning discharging on a planet other than Earth.
Cassini’s adventure will end soon because it’s almost out of fuel. So to avoid possibly ever contaminating moons like Enceladus or Titan, on Sept. 15 it will intentionally dive into Saturn’s atmosphere.
The spacecraft is expected to lose radio contact with Earth within about one to two minutes after beginning its decent into Saturn’s upper atmosphere. But on the way down, before contact is lost, eight of Cassini’s 12 science instruments will be operating! More details on the spacecraft’s final decent can be found HERE.
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Hail the Hexagon...
The full light of our sun allowed the Cassini spacecraft to capture this image of Saturn's hexagonal polar jet stream, but the sun does not provide much warmth. In addition to being low in the sky (just like summer at Earth's poles), the sun is nearly ten times as distant from Saturn as from Earth. This results in the sunlight being only about 1 percent as intense as at our planet.
The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 560,000 miles (900,000 kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 33 miles (54 kilometers) per pixel.
More info: https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/jpl/pia21327/hail-the-hexagon
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Take a dive between Saturn and its rings to see what our Cassini spacecraft saw during its first daring plunge on April 26!
As Cassini made its first-ever dive through the gap between Saturn and its rings on April 26, 2017, one of its imaging cameras took a series of rapid-fire images that were used to make this movie sequence. The video begins with a view of the vortex at Saturn's north pole, then heads past the outer boundary of the planet's hexagon-shaped jet stream and continues further southward.
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This unprocessed image shows features in Saturn's atmosphere from closer than ever before. The view was captured by our Cassini spacecraft during its first Grand Finale dive between the planet and its rings on April 26, 2017.
As Cassini dove through the gap, it came within about 1,900 miles (3,000 kilometers) of Saturn's cloud tops (where the air pressure is 1 bar -- comparable to the atmospheric pressure of Earth at sea level) and within about 200 miles (300 kilometers) of the innermost visible edge of the rings.
See all the unprocessed images from Cassini: https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/raw-images/
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