Solar
& Planetary LtE Now in November 2023
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¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-30 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-29 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-28 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
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regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-27 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
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regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-25 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
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regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-24 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
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regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Venus
2023-11-22 UT
Received:
Venus
images on
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regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-23 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-22 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Carolyn
Porco Newsletter:
Sixty Years Ago Today and Thoughts on Thanksgiving
Received:
Dear Friends,
For
those of you at least as old as I am, you will recognize today's date as the
60th anniversary of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It was an
unspeakable horror, that one November day in 1963, that
left indelible memories and life-long emotional ties.
I still
remember the flow of events. I was 10 years old, living with my family in the
My
mother idolized JFK and I desperately wanted to tell her what had happened. So,
I immediately dashed the remaining 70 feet to my house, barged through the
front door, and hollered for my mother. She came rushing out of the kitchen,
alarmed at the ruckus. I blurted out the news. In disbelief, she quickly turned
on the television. Walter Cronkite had already announced that Kennedy had died
of his wounds and news of it was everywhere. No one wants to see their mother
upset, and mine was so painfully distressed that I cry even today just thinking
about it.
That
awful moment began the famous Four Days in November, when America, and much of
the world, remained hypnotically, immovably transfixed to their living room television
by a deep need for communal sharing of grief and shock, and of being witness to
the unfolding mournful, funereal ceremony and the rites and protocols by which
America commemorated and buried its dead leader. Who among us who lived through
it all could ever forget a dread-filled Lyndon Johnson hastily taking the oath
of President on Air Force One? Or the simple, horse-drawn caisson carrying
JFK's coffin and, in an ancient ritual dating back to Genghis Khan, the
riderless horse that followed, with rear-facing boots in silver stirrups
signifying the fallen leader? Or the grace and stoicism of
JFK's widow, Jackie? Or tiny JFK Jr's poignant salute to his father?
In
those four days of televised history-making events, the world was guided from
violence to dignity, from tragedy to acceptance, from chaos to finale. That
solemn procession was precisely what people the world
over, and we Americans in particular, badly needed. The nation endured and life
continued.
--------------------------------------
The
following summer, on
"When
I think of President Kennedy, I think of what Shakespeare said in Romeo and
Juliet:
'When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars
And he shall make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.' "
Inspired
by Robert Kennedy, I used the very same words 34 years later to eulogize one of
my own heroes, planetary geologist and a former Caltech professor of mine,
Eugene Shoemaker, by inscribing them onto a brass foil and sending them, along
with Shoemaker's cremains, to the Moon on the Lunar Prospector spacecraft. The
entire package crash-landed into the south polar region of the Moon in July
1999, thirty-years to the month after the landing of Apollo 11 and humankind's
first lunar footsteps. https://ciclops.org/public/tribute.html
And with
that, the cycle was complete ... from the calamitous death of one hero to the
death of another ... joined by the timeless words of Shakespeare.
--------------------------------------------
Tomorrow
will be Thanksgiving Day in the
To take
reckoning of your own life, and all the wonder-filled moments and events, both
personal and not, and the opportunities and knowledge -- yes, knowledge! -- you have gained from them, and to dwell on and be grateful
for all of it, is a salve for the heart and soul. One of the most effective
practices of gratitude for me starts outdoors, on a clear, dark night, gazing
up at a starlit sky and absorbing its message.
I
repeat here what I wrote on Facebook on
"Be
sure to spend some time reveling in the rarity of the moment, the beauty of the
starlit skies of our planet, the antiquity of the Universe, and how fortunate
we all are to have the celestial wonders that surround us ... our planetary
neighbors, the very distant stars and nebulae in our own galaxy, all the
billions upon billions of immensely distant galaxies ... laid out before our
eyes in such glorious splendor. The night sky is the only scene we can savor
that is 13.8 billion years old. No experience can better convey the profundity
and significance of our own limited existence and the improbable blessing of
being alive, than gazing, with knowledge and
acceptance, upon its starry countenance."
There is
enough gratitude to be had in that magnificent view and what it has taught us
to last a lifetime.
Remember
that tomorrow and be sure to have a Happy Thanksgiving!
Best to
all!
Carolyn Porco
¤••••• Subject: Saturn
2023-11-12 UT
Received:
Saturn
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Venusr
2023-11-16 UT
Received:
Venus
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-15 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter 2023-11-14 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-13 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-12 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-11 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter 2023-11-10 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Saturn
2023-11-09 UT
Received:
Saturn
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-09 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Happy
Birthday Carl Sagan ... and
the Cassini Retrospective Begins!
Received:
Dear
Friends,
Today
is the 89th birthday of my colleague and friend, and one of my biggest heroes,
Carl Sagan … a man still very much loved and still very much missed.
Happy
Birthday to Carl!
-------------------------------------------------------
But
it is also a very special day in the life of Cassini’s exploration of Saturn.
It was
20 years ago today that we on Cassini sighted the planet Saturn, alluring,
mysterious, beckoning, 111 million kilometers (69 million miles) in the
distance … about three-fourths the distance between the Sun and the Earth. https://ciclops.org/view.php%3Fid=74.html
After
13 long years designing, building, and launching the spacecraft and all its
many systems and scientific instruments, and after enduring 6 years to cross
the solar system, we were now less than 8 months away from entrance into Saturn
orbit.
"Portal
View"
It
wasn’t the first time we sighted Saturn on our journey there. We had done so a year earlier. There is a rather embarrassing story
behind the public release of that first 2002 image that I won’t tell here. I am
saving it, and many other backstories of our imaging adventures to and around
Saturn, for my first book. How’s
that for a teaser?
But
what made today’s anniversary image different from its predecessor a year
earlier was the cache of five of Saturn’s seven main satellites -- Mimas,
Enceladus, Dione, Tethys, Dione and Rhea – and the details we could now see on
the planet and in the rings. We
could not resolve any of these moons at this point but divisions in the
planet’s rings, like the 4800-km (2980-mi) wide Cassini Division between the
outer A ring and the bright B ring, and the much narrower, 325-km (200-mi) wide
Encke gap near the outer edge of the A ring, were clearly visible, as was the
fainter C ring interior to the B ring.
The multi-banded structure and the delicate hues of yellow, brown and pink in the
southern atmosphere were also becoming more apparent.
And
then there was that blue in the northern hemisphere. I thought at the time, blue? Where did that come from?! There was no blue in the Saturn
atmosphere when the Voyagers flew by the planet in late 1980 and mid-1981. I was mystified. The Saturn experts on my team guessed
that it was produced by molecular hydrogen scattering at altitudes above the
haze and clouds, where the atmosphere is clear … in other words, the same
process (though a different compound) that turns our sky blue. That guess,
turns out, is likely only part of the answer -- see my forthcoming book for the
full answer -- but I was overjoyed at the presence of this new color in the
Saturn atmosphere. It meant that our images were going to be gloriously
colorful – watch out, Jupiter! -- and would no doubt
dazzle us as well as our followers. I was not wrong.
With
this distant Saturn image in hand, our excitement and anticipation of what lay
ahead began reaching acute levels.
One of
my team members, Gerhard Neukum, a professor at Free University in
Another
imaging team member, Anthony DelGenio, a specialist in atmospheric studies from
NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said, “For all of us who
have worked for more than a decade preparing for this mission, seeing Saturn
grow larger and larger in the eyes of the Cassini cameras is a bit like the
feelings children have as they come downstairs on Christmas morning to see what
gifts are waiting for them under the tree. But this Christmas will last for
four years." What we
didn’t know then was that Cassini’s Christmas would last 13 years!
And
Wesley Huntress, the director of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Division in
1990 and the individual who made the final selections at that time of all of us
principal investigators and team leaders, exclaimed, “Wow! So
far away, so long to travel, so much effort to make it happen, and so worth
it".
Of
course, how ‘worth it’ it would be depended on us getting successfully into
orbit on
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
It has
seemed to me for a while now that today’s 20-year anniversary of Cassini’s
‘Portal View’ might provide a lovely opportunity to begin a chronological
retrospective of what we found at Saturn during Cassini’s time there. At a time when so many aspects of modern
life seem to be unraveling, it would remind us of how wonder-filled and
reassuring it felt to know that our magnificent, golden emissary to Saturn was
faithfully conducting its work, revealing to us one marvel after another, and
that for so many years, we could look forward almost daily to the possibility
of a new and spectacular vision of a far-flung alien world.
For
those members of the generation who missed it the first time around, it would
be their chance to learn the full story and witness it as it unfolded.
And note well …. all of you
would receive from me something you cannot get from the countless individuals
who post our Cassini images on social media … the real
stories behind the images. Why
they were taken? What did we learn from them that we didn’t know before? Were
they scientifically successful? Did the taking of the image pose any
particular challenges? Were they
processed to bring out any particular aspect of the body being imaged? Did it require any additional
information or data gathered from other Cassini instruments to arrive at the
full scientific value? All
this and more … from the person who not only led the team that planned all those
images and made them happen, but from the person who also set the guidelines
and procedures for the careful and artful processing, captioning, and posting
of those images for public consumption.
It all required visual balance, attention to natural color reproduction,
and a degree of meticulousness that had never been done before in the
planetary program. As a result, our images were and still are much beloved the world over. Call me proud!
I have
yet to work out how long this retrospective will take. To take a full
13-years might be too much, you think? I would be 84 years old by the time
Cassini re-crashes into Saturn! Probably not going to happen.
I’ll
certainly be thinking about this matter before the next installment in this
re-enactment. And if you have any suggestions, send them along!
Know
that the Cassini Retrospective will not be the only subject matter I will
discuss in this newsletter (which at some point will move to Substack). But it will be the main communication
vehicle for it.
So,
consider this newsletter the beginning of our sentimental look back at
Cassini’s time at Saturn. And if you know anyone else who would like to
join this adventure, tell them they can subscribe to this newsletter
here:
https://listserv.ciclops.org/mailman/listinfo/announce
With
that, I bid you farewell, and as I said long ago as we were approaching Saturn
… Prepare to be amazed!
Wishing
you all the best!
Carolyn Porco
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter 2023-11-08 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-07 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-06 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-05 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter images, 10th
October 2023
Received:
Hi all,
Here is
a series of Jupiter images taken under very good seeing.
S4TC RS
is again well place for observation.
Regards,
Christophe PELLIER (
Planetary astronomy and imaging
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-04 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-03 UT
Received:
Jupiter image on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Vunus
2023-11-01 UT
Received:
Venus
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Saturn
2023-11-01 UT
Received:
Saturn image on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-02 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-11-01 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (
¤••••• Subject: Jupiter
2023-10-31 UT
Received:
Jupiter
images on
Best
regards,
Tomio AKUTSU (