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NEWS by David Tytell
Is a New Moon News?
This tiny speck is the 60th satellite found to circle Saturn. It was spotted by the Cassini spacecraft on May 30, 2007.
NASA / JPL / Space Science Institute
Now NASA is reporting that Cassini spotted another moon around Saturn. That brings Saturn's family of satellites to 60. It currently has a temporary designation, S/2007 S4, but it will most likely earn one of those hard-to-pronounce names that all the new Saturnian satellites receive. If you want to see it move, NASA posted a cool animation showing the discovery.
The find, located inside the ring plane, doesn't place Saturn higher in the standings; Jupiter is still king with 63 satellites. But I suspect that won't last for long. Cassini is on patrol and there isn't a spacecraft in the hunt around Jupiter.
We've compiled the long list of moons for all the planets (and dwarf planets). Check it out, but see how many of them you know (or can pronounce) before clicking on the link.
So do you think this discovery is newsworthy? When will satellite discoveries become boring (if they aren't already)? Let us know what you think below.
Posted by David Tytell, July 24, 2007
The following comments do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Sky Publishing.
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First comments (from 15)
Are new moons news
Posted by Justin Skywatcher
July 24, 2007 At 03:14 PM PDT
Yes, I think new moons, extra-solar planets and asteroids are news. Perhaps not headline news, but they are worhty of mention
Are new moons news
Posted by Lisa
July 24, 2007 At 06:02 PM PDT
Yes! I love hearing about nifty new things in space.
Are new moons news?
Posted by Enrico
July 24, 2007 At 08:54 PM PDT
Yes, they are. Also, I am glad that they are naming them and not just using the numbers. If you look at a table of data, or a chart of the orbts of the objects in the Jupiter system or the Saturnian system, you will find hard science and also wonder and magic (in a metphorical sense). It is like looking at a map of Indonesia, or of the Aegean Islands of Greece. Each large island is familiar, but you also see the names and positions of the lesser islands, some mere rocks, but fascinating nevertheless.
Are new moons news?
Posted by Enrico
July 24, 2007 At 08:54 PM PDT
Yes, they are. Also, I am glad that they are naming them and not just using the numbers. If you look at a table of data, or a chart of the orbts of the objects in the Jupiter system or the Saturnian system, you will find hard science and also wonder and magic (in a metphorical sense). It is like looking at a map of Indonesia, or of the Aegean Islands of Greece. Each large island is familiar, but you also see the names and positions of the lesser islands, some mere rocks, but fascinating nevertheless.
Are new moons news
Posted by Gain Lee
July 25, 2007 At 02:26 AM PDT
I wonder, is it time for another classification debate?
We all have the moons we love and know ie. Ganymede, Titan, Triton etc....Are we due a set of major, minor , standard , dwarf moons?
And yes, new moons are news worthy. Otherwise I'd have to say 'I don't know' when a child asks me ' How many moon does Saturn have?'
Are new moons news?
Posted by Paulo André
July 25, 2007 At 02:42 AM PDT
Of course they are worhty of mention, because it is new data. However these new moons are always small pieces of rock or ice, moving around Saturn, so, is natural that they are less interisting and fascinating than large moons like Titan, Rhea, Tethys, among others, but despite their size they are newsworthy...
new moons
Posted by Frank R
July 25, 2007 At 03:20 AM PDT
At a count of sixty, new moons are still newsworthy in my book, in the sense that I will read two or three paragraphs about the discovery. But there is a point where new moons will cease to be newsworthy in much the same way that new "planets" in the Solar System have ceased to be newsworthy. No one bats an eye at a new KBO, never mind a hundred new main belt asteroids. These are 'minor planets' and the very name makes them un-newsworthy, but they were once counted among the planets. Some similar effect will hit when the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, etc. hit a hundred or maybe two hundred. No one will keep track except trivia fans at that level... So how do we distinguish "significant" news of moon discoveries from noise? What we need is a system for categorizing these objects based on mass (preferably) or diameter. At some point we have to deal with the huge number of ring "particles" in Saturn's rings which are, of course, tiny moonlets. Let's hope no one starts naming those!
-FER
Are new moons newsworthy?
Posted by Steve Hallmark
July 25, 2007 At 06:46 AM PDT
A 'new' moon should meet the same test of newsworthiness as any other news. A new mini member of the asteroid belt would be a yawn. But a moon that is (a) discovered using a new method, (b) has a previously unobserved (or rarely observed) property, such as a liquid helium ocean, or (c) its discovery can be linked to a new way of looking at or understanding moons in a statistical sense (e.g., 'planets with rings have fewer mini moons than planets without rings of a similar size', would be newsworthy.
Many moons
Posted by Stephen
July 25, 2007 At 01:24 PM PDT
Saturn has billions or trillions of moons. That's because there is no lower limit on how small a moon can be. Each dust mote in the rings counts. Well, if it can be resolved, and tracked, perhaps. Earth has thousands. Some astronaut's glove, etc. (They're even tracked.)
I've seen 5 of Saturn's moons. I'm convinced that i'll never see this new one, except in Cassini data. I doubt that the HST could detect it. When the Cassini mission ends, does this rock stop being a moon?
Yet, this is news. Not as moon number sixty. This little rock has something to tell us about the Saturn ring system. What it has to say is the news.
Are new moons newsworthy?
Posted by Daniel Johnson
July 27, 2007 At 07:07 AM PDT
When the professional astronomers were trying define what constitutes a planet--with their work resulting in the demotion of Pluto--another, similar problem occurred to me (and probably to thousands of others): How do we define a moon? There is no definition, and there needs to be. It is absurd to name every tiny chunk of rock as if it were in the same class as Ganymede or Titan.
So the news is this: we don't know what a moon is.
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comments (15)