Astronomy: Tonite Trio Saturn, Moon and Star Spica Triple Threat

CREDIT: Starry Night Software

From Denny:  Does this month get any better?  We have a Super Moon on Saturday too.  Tonight, 3 May 2012, is a special treat for skywatchers about an hour after the sun sets.  Look up in the sky and you will get the special eye candy treat to behold a rare beautiful sight: a triple conjunction of the planet Saturn, the bright star Spica and our moon.

Video: How Weird Would Earth Look with Saturns Rings?

From Denny: This was a curious video I ran across today on Digg. Someone decided to do an artist's rendering of what Earth might look like if we had the rings of Saturn. It's a bit disorienting, amusing and even eerily beautiful to see the images of various cities around the world with how the rings would look in their skyline.

If our night skies looked different all these centuries can you imagine how our religions and mythology stories might have taken a far different track from this astronomical influence?

Take a look at this wonderful video:



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Astronomy Video: NASA Gives Us View of Saturns Rings Up Close

From Denny: From the photographing spacecraft Cassini comes these awesome photos of Saturn's rings. Almost looks like an animation!

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Astronomy: New Signs of Hidden Sea on Saturn Moon

From Cosmic Log at MSNBC.com:

"New research suggests the ice volcanoes blasting off Saturn's moon Enceladus are rooted in an underground sea, a finding that raises the prospect for microbial life.

Scientists have been trying to figure out what is happening on Enceladus to generate the icy geysers that have been photographed, analyzed and sampled by the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft.

"This debate has been going on for years — whether there has been liquid water, whether there could be an underground ocean," Cassini scientist team member Candice Hansen-Koharcheck told Discovery News.

Astronomers used ground-based telescopes to look for molecules of sodium, which should be present if rock had mingled with liquid water. They didn't find any, silencing proponents making a case for a subsurface sea on Enceladus.
That point is now moot. At a meeting of European geoscientists in Vienna last week, Frank Postberg with Germany's Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics and colleagues explained that the sodium is, in fact, there — it was simply bound in a form (sodium chloride) not detectable by Earth-bound telescopes.

"This is only possible if the plume source is liquid water that is or has been in contact with the rocky material of Enceladus' core," the scientists wrote in the EGU General Assembly's 2009 Geophysical Research Abstracts.

Added Carolyn Porco, head of the Cassini imaging team, "Suffice it to say the prospects of a subsurface sea on Enceladus are excellent."

For the rest of this very interesting article just click on the title link. (Jury duty starts today for me - apologies for not being able to re-write this into a condensed form for you!)