# Cassini Huygens Lands On Titan



## JoT (Aug 12, 2003)

Anyone see the pictures from Titan taken by ESA's Cassini Huygens? Pretty amazing considering this moon of Saturn is around -180 degrees C. First pictures show what could be rivers (not water obviously!) and a land surface with what looks like blocks of ice. Even in my innebriated state last night I really thaought it was a fantatstic achievement









I think this space exploration is great .... perhaps because I grew up in the 1960's .... it would be great to see more manned missions.


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## Mrcrowley (Apr 23, 2003)

Sounds interesting. Was this on the net you saw it or TV?


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## JoT (Aug 12, 2003)

Mrcrowley said:


> Sounds interesting. Was this on the net you saw it or TV?


It was on the TV Paul; but the latest news is on the ESA web-site

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/


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## Mrcrowley (Apr 23, 2003)

JoT said:


> Mrcrowley said:
> 
> 
> > Sounds interesting. Was this on the net you saw it or TV?
> ...


 Thanks John.

I like anything like that as well. As long as it doesn't involve something hurtling towards us meaning impending doom, great by me.


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## JoT (Aug 12, 2003)

Mrcrowley said:


> I like anything like that as well. As long as it doesn't involve something hurtling towards us meaning impending doom, great by me.


If you hear about anything hurtling towards us Paul let me know









As long as there is enought time to buy several new watches on credit and order a couple of Â£2000 a night hookers I don't mind


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## Silver Hawk (Dec 2, 2003)

JoT said:


> and order a couple of Â£2000 a night hookers I don't mind


How's your New Year Resolution doing John?


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## Mrcrowley (Apr 23, 2003)

Silver Hawk said:


> JoT said:
> 
> 
> > and order a couple of Â£2000 a night hookers I don't mind
> ...


 Oh don't say you're still on your 2K a night habit


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## JoT (Aug 12, 2003)

Mrcrowley said:


> Silver Hawk said:
> 
> 
> > JoT said:
> ...



















In my dreams


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

Too bad I missed that, I really must get around to getting a TV aerial. Haven't seen any TV for months









Still, strange to think that I saw Titan (although nothing more than a point of light) with my own eyes last August whilst I was taking a look at Saturn









I don't have the facility to take photographs through my telescope yet, so I have to adopt the traditional approach of making sketches of my observations, although I use the PC to make them look as true to life as I can.

Here's the sketch of what I could see back in August:


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## pg tips (May 16, 2003)

Just out of interest Rich what sort of telescope do you need for images like that? When the loft conversion comes together I will have quite a good view over virtually unlit skies due north and was thinking about looking into setting a telescope up. Would like something I could attach a camera to.

We are looking at poss another 6 months before I will be ready and of course I have to convince the wife of the educational benefits for our daughter.


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

My telescope is an American Meade ETX-105EC. It's quite small as astronomical telescopes go but, as I live in London, I need portability so that I can take the scope to where the skies are clearer and darker. The optics are of very high quality and far superior to the sort of thing you might get in some catalogues for example. Cost was around Â£750.

You can see the ETX range of scopes from the Meade site HERE. Mine's the "middle" one, although they now call it the 105-AT so I guess there have been some modifications.

Meade often seem to have special offers and are currently offering their LPI "Lunar Planetary Imager" device as a freebie with their ETX range. Just what you may need to take photos! A camera can be fitted if you wish with the use of various adapters and counterwieghts if necessary. When I bought my scope the special offer was a complete set of eyepieces (which is what you swap to change the magnification) in an aluminium case - worth around Â£700 at full retail! Very nice









The ETX range in this country usually seem to come with the Autostar software (to guide the scope to specific objects) and a nice field tripod thrown in which usually cost around Â£200 to buy separately. Accessories are expensive and you might need to budget around another Â£250 for some essential items, so you're looking at around Â£1000 all in + the cost of any extra eyepieces (Â£50-Â£150 each) you may want to buy at a later date. The standard eyepiece supplied with the scope is relatively wide angle so you'll probably want some higher magnification ones.

For serious astronomy you probably want to look at an 8" reflector telescope. But for that you'd be looking at several thousand pounds and an interesting delivery and installation exercise! My Meade works out to about 4.5" I think and seems pretty capable for my amatuer uses.

Mike Weasner has a really good site about ETX telescopes. Don't be scared by the picture on the front page, it's not really that big


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## Stan (Aug 7, 2003)

I know Fanny Adams about telescopes but one of our lad's does.









He is studying astronomy at OU level and owns a Meade, he did a lot of reseach and made the descision to buy a Meade and he has not been dissapionted.

He recently bought a (used) Nikon E995 to use on his 'scope and the pictures are brilliant.









Meade gets my vote, from what I've seen.


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## pg tips (May 16, 2003)

gulp! I thought 250 max, better start saving or selling watches?

thanks Rich plenty to be looking at there, I've always been fascinated by astronomy, used to stay up to watch TSAN when I was young. Just something I've drifted away from as I've got older.


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

I used to religiously watch TSAN. One of the few programmes I miss from the TV. I shall definitely be getting a new aerial sorted before the start of the GP season though


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## JoT (Aug 12, 2003)

Rich I like the drawing ..... how do you do that? Other rthan the obvious answer ... a pencil









Do you or can you project the image onto paper, or use some sort of grid ??

It looks really good IMO ... the DB's in fact


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## Fred (Feb 23, 2003)

RichH, that is one fantastic drawing, well done. many years ago i had a garden shed converted so the roof hinged up each side,with a small telescope in, it was only a 3 inch refractor with up to 120x eye piece but i could get to see Saturns rings o.k. its a fantastic subject and a wonderful thing to go out in to the country on these dark winters nights, cheers fred

p.s. you can see Saturn in the night sky if its clear tonight, just look into the east,


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

> Rich I like the drawing ..... how do you do that?


I cheated is the short answer









I've got several software programs and star catalogs that show the correct positions of the stars, planets, larger asteroids, man-made satellites etc. on the screen depending on the time, date and my viewing location. Some of them go so far as to show the planets in their correct phase, with all their relevant moons in the correct positions.

It's a fairly simple matter to adjust the screen to give a very rough representation of what I've observed before taking a screen capture. Later on, I can go to work on the screen capture with a graphics package to make it look much more realistic and representative of what I actually saw.

Not only do the results look accurate, I think they're more pleasing to the eye than traditional pencil sketches. Not as good as a proper photograph of course.

Here're a couple of others I'm quite pleased with:

First off Jupiter, with the moons Ganymede, Europa, Io and Callisto. This was viewed with the standard (wide angle) 26mm eyepiece before I'd taken delivery of the higher magnification ones:










And Venus, observed 15 minutes after the Saturn picture:


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

Cheers Fred, I get out as often as I can, but not as often as I'd like! The hours are pretty unsociable too







I just checked my logs and see that the Saturn and Venus observations were done at 03:45 and 04:00 hrs.


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## rhaythorne (Jan 12, 2004)

A quick example, as I just happen to have my laptop with the software on it with me:










A quick re-colour, resize, mirror (because the image in the telescope is mirrored without the use of an extra erector prism), add some softening filters and hey presto!


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## mach 0.0013137 (Jan 10, 2005)

Just remembered wasn`t this the Christiaan Huygens who was the first to sucessfully use a pendulum in a clock and also had ideas about using a spiral spring to control a balance wheel?


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## JoT (Aug 12, 2003)

The probe has found frozen water on Titan; add that to the methane you have the the building blocks for creating complex organic molecules and life. Titan at -180 degrees C is too cold for life of any sort to develop (at the surface anyway); I wonder how many more planetary bodies are out there with water and methane? The fact we have found another one in our solar system is very significant, the odds have shortened a lot that there is life out there somewhere


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