John Kenn
Million-Ring Circus
1. RINGS FROM AFAR
Measuring 175,000 miles wide but as little as 30 feet thick, Saturn’s rings contain debris of varying ages and composition, all revolving at different speeds.
2. THREE MOONS
Titan and Dione, along with speck-sized Prometheus appear in rare alignment. Tiny so-called shepherd moons help shape the rings and prevent them from dispersing.
3. TITAN
Concentric rings wind in front of Satrun’s biggest moon, Titan, with tiny Janus in teh foreground. The rings are so massive that they have their own atmosphere, separate from Saturn’s. Cassini found evidence of oxygen all around the icy rings.
4. RINGS CLOSE UP
Did you know the Easter Island heads have bodies?
Yup it’s true. And some are as tall as 10 meters (33ft)! The Moai have overly large heads (3/5 the size of their bodies), and because of photographs taken in the 50’s of the slopes of Rano Raraku (where the statues are buried to their shoulders) many (including me) are lead to believe that they are only heads!
Check out the Easter Island Statue Project (http://www.eisp.org/) for more info on the excavation, Easter Island history, and more pictures!
Photos: If All of Earth’s Water was put into Single Sphere
This picture shows the size of a sphere that would contain all of Earth’s water in comparison to the size of the Earth. The blue sphere sitting on the United States, reaching from about Salt Lake City, Utah to Topeka, Kansas, has a diameter of about 860 miles (about 1,385 kilometers) , with a volume of about 332,500,000 cubic miles (1,386,000,000 cubic kilometers). The sphere includes all the water in the oceans, seas, ice caps, lakes and rivers as well as groundwater, atmospheric water, and even the water in you, your dog, and your tomato plant.
Rare Venus Transit of Sun in June to Amaze Skywatchers
Make sure to see the June 5 passage of the planet Venus across the face of the sun: a similar event won’t happen again until the year 2117.
In the Image:
Watching the tiny silhouette of the planet Venus slowly cross the face of the sun doesn’t evoke the same drama and excitement as experiencing a total solar eclipse, but what makes a transit so unique is its rarity and historical significance.
Done with school….for now
It's Okay To Be Smart: Magnifying the Universe
I’ve featured several “scale of everything” interactives before, my favorites being the Scale of the Universe interactive web portal (which still makes my brain fall out of my head to this day) or the ChronoZoom project.
Here’s another one called Magnifying the Universe, by …
Ween - I Don’t Wanna Leave You On The Farm
