[meteorite-list] The Year of Saturn

[MexicoDoug]

Happy New Year, what we can all call the year of Saturn.

It gets kicked off tonight right about now, until after midnight in temperate and tropical North America Saturn, tonight, Dec. 31 will be the closest to Earth Saturn arrives - a real royal alignment whose magnitude is probably unequalled for a couple of centuries, considering we still have practi�cally maximum ring opening, and you won't get such a nice view of the rings really for about 30 years, so while contemplating your new years resolutions, add thirty to you age to see if you'll be doddering out next time...no better yet, go outside and find Saturn now!

That golden planet Saturn is midways between the Hup� brothers, eh...I mean Castor and Pollux, the Gemini Heads' stars and Orion the Hunter...it won't be twinkling like a star...except, maybe in Los Angeles, Mexico City and Houston, and it will be pointing directly at Betelgeuse, Orion's Armpit as the vertex of a beautiful long isoceles triangle with the twins' heads at the base.  It'll be about 45-60 degrees high - that's between half and two thirds to vertical.

It may be the closest you ever get to a Saturn rock in your life!  And Saturn rings it in.

Now, in 2004, Saturn senses that we are hot on his tail, and there won't be an opposition (closest approach like today).  That only happens once in 50 years or so!  But ...

Start the year out right ... NASA's Italian namesake Cassini will be getting there this coming year on July 1, 2004 (Ron can you tell the very respected JPL staff to get it right, they are one year off on the calculator clock on the official Cassini website (546 day counting down jajaja http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm), I hope this isn't the way the mission will be run), it will go into orbit, but not before checking a moon or two up close ... and then ... then the ESA's hitchhiker...Dutch namesake Huygens' will take a sky dive right to a soft landing on the surface of TITAN (one year from now in January)!!  Whooooaaaaaa!  Huygen's ain't no bicycle wheel...its weighs 319 kg and it's as big as a giant earthmover wheel, and you can bet it's traveling light and packed!  Oops, time to go out before the stars appear inside.  Truly this is the year of Saturn ... Before the spirits get to you... contemplate if Earth had rings like Saturn's ... why, oh why, aren't they a solid plate ... hmmm . perhaps below the critical radii they become falling stones ... and perhaps we can watch some Saturnian meteors falling when Cassini gets there!!  And then as the theory goes, the over 30 moons of Saturn steal orbital energy from the ring material .. what more perhaps the Saturn nomads can be contacted..., they have an ever replenishing source of stones ... probably not too differentiated (no pallasites, irons, and stoney irons, nor HED, but just maybe the parent body squeaked by to have some action of different minerology ...  See you next year, The year of Saturn (Our European members are nice to keep a secret.  The message will arrive on their servers in 2004...what a concept...
Feliz A�o
Doug Dawn
Mexico

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