(editor's note: Ready for an adventure? Data from NASA's Cassini mission reveal Saturn's moon Phoebe has more planet-like qualities than previously thought.
I'm so happy to report that news of activities happening "outside and around" our planet continue to intrigue more and more people!
Just a few years ago, "space geeks" were the only ones interested in all the wonderous events of our neighboring planets, stars, and galaxies. Now it seems everyone has their eyes to the skies!
The view from down here is a special vantage point, so I hope you enjoy this report and get a better understanding of how important YOU are to the beautiful Cosmos we all call home.
~All my Love, Boo)
Cassini Finds Saturn Moon Has Planet-Like Qualities
Data from NASA's Cassini mission reveal Saturn's moon Phoebe has more planet-like qualities than previously thought. Saturn is surrounded by a cloud of irregular moons that circle the planet in orbits tilted from Saturn's orbit around the sun, the so-called equatorial plane. Phoebe is the largest of these irregular moons and also has the distinction of orbiting backward in relation to the other moons. Saturn's large moons appear to have formed from gas and dust orbiting in the planet's equatorial plane. These moons currently orbit Saturn in that same plane.
Phoebe likely stayed warm for tens of millions of years before freezing up. The study suggests the heat also would have enabled the moon to host liquid water at one time. This could explain the signature of water-rich material on Phoebe's surface previously detected by Cassini.
Comments
Resonance Theory of Planet/moon Formation
I was a CCOP student at JPL on the imaging team of the 1980 Saturn flyby of Voyager I, so I have a particular interest in Saturn and its satellites.
The relative size and placement of moons and (exo)planets may be indicative of their formation mechanism.
An alternative 'resonance model' of satellite formation, Snowball Solar System (SSS), suggests that Titan was the progenitor for the other 6 'planemo' moons: the 5 'inside' moons of which formed around its inner 2:1 to 3:1 resonances in succession and Iapetus which formed around its outer 1:2 to 1:3 resonances. Formation 'in succession' requires the sun to have originally formed as a central binary pair (which merged in a luminous red nova at 4.567 Ga to form the sun). The secular perturbation of the central binary pair caused planetary/moon orbit inflation, creating spacing between planets and moons formed around resonances of their larger progenitor bodies, permitting new planets/moons to be formed in vacated resonances.
Jupiter may be the progenitor planet that formed Venus, Earth, Mars and the asteroid belt around its inner resonances, and the planet Mercury may have originally been the far-larger progenitor body of the remaining jovian Galilean moons which was wrest from Jupiter by the central binary pair.
Proxima Centauri (Proxima) may be a binary companion to the sun which formed the outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn and Neptune around its inner resonances and Uranus around its outer resonances. Then as Proxima walked out to its current location at 270,000 AU fueled by secular perturbation (stellar orbit inflation) of its own binary pair (and overrunning Uranus and throwing it inward), it formed the comets of the Oort cloud around its inner and outer resonances along the way. And Proxima's current radial velocity (which it has in common with Alpha Centauri) merely a temporary deflection of Proxima by the far-larger Alpha Centauri interloper.
And yes, then Phoebe is a planetesimal capture by Jupiter.
Thank you for your insight! I
Thank you for your insight! I really enjoy examining the effects of light and sound resonance and how it manifests, so your background information was fascinating :)
All my Love, Boo