Category Archives: astronomy

astronomy, saturn, venus

What Would Venus Look Like from Saturn?

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Bright, Shiny, Small

NASA's Cassini spacecraft sees Venus, the white dot just to the right of the image center. The image was taken November 10, 2012.
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft sees Venus, the white dot just to the right of the image center. The image was taken November 10, 2012. Courtesy NASA/CICLOPS/CASSINI. Click to see larger image.
Venus appears just off the edge of the planet, in the upper part of the image, directly above the white streak of Saturn's G ring. Lower down, Saturn's E ring makes an appearance, looking blue thanks to the scattering properties of the dust that comprises the ring. A bright spot near the E ring is a distant star.
Venus appears just off the edge of the planet, in the upper part of the image, directly above the white streak of Saturn’s G ring. Courtesy NASA/CICLOPS/CASSINI. Click to enlarge.

It’s always fun to get a look at worlds in our solar system from the perspective of other planets. The imaging system on the Cassini spacecraft, which is on a multi-year mission studying the Saturn system, caught a glimpse of Venus during one of the mission’s orbits around Saturn. What you’re seeing here is what Venus (and basically Earth if it were visible in this image) would look like if you were orbiting Saturn from your own space station.

Our inner solar system worlds would be just tiny dots in the distance.  In the foreground would be Saturn itself — or rather just the limb of the ringed planet as shown at left. The rings stretch out to the left.

The image on the right also shows Venus as it appeared from the Cassini spacecraft on January 4th, 2013. The rings are not illuminated as much as they were in the previous image, making it easier to spot the planet. That bluish streak at the lower right is the E ring.

You need to look at these pictures in full size (just click on them) to appreciate the beauty of seeing Earth’s neighbor world from faraway Saturn. To me, it really brings home the fact that our home world is really a tiny place in space — and it’s the only home world we have!

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The Science Questions That Get Asked

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Dumb Questions? NO.

I’ve been following the latest kerfuffle over a CNN anchor asking Bill Nye if a near-Earth asteroid swinging close to Earth had anything to do with global warming.  In watching the video of the question, it’s pretty clear to me that the anchor doesn’t really think that climate change and the asteroid have anything to do with each other. She’s trying to make a transition from one story to the next in a crowded broadcast. But, it was a pretty clumsy segue. Nye’s response was a nice educational linkage between words that astronomers use (like meteors and meteorology, and so on).  I thought he handled it pretty well.

A lot of commentators online have really come down on the anchor for asking what seemed like a dumb question. You know what? There’s no such thing as a dumb question.  There are ill-thought-out questions. There are uninformed questions, and loaded ones and sarcastic ones, but they’re not dumb. This question led to a teachable moment in science for the anchor and presumably for the audience members watching the show. So, it’s all good. Maybe next time the anchor will think twice before asking once. And, maybe somebody in the audience learned something about how scientists should answer questions (even loaded, awkward ones).

There are a lot of really misguided things that people say, particularly when it comes to science.  And, they deserve to get called out on whatever misunderstanding they have that led to the questions. They also deserve rational answers from scientists. I am not for one minute defending the creationist claims about biology or evolution. Those are indefensible because they come from a position of wilful ignorance (and sometimes wilful lying) by those who preach them. Nor am I defending the ideas espoused by the oil and gas companies that are paying scientists to denounce human involvement in global warming and pollution.  Those come from people who have a stake in maintaining the status quo at the expense of the planet and have little to do with the actual science they are deriding.

I am saying, however, that learning involves asking questions. And, that’s why there’s no such thing as a dumb question. Good, honest attempts to find out about our planet,  our life forms, the scientific discoveries that inform us about the cosmos are never dumb.  And, for those of us who bring science to the public, there’s always a teachable moment ? even when a TV anchor asks an awkward question.  I like how Bill Nye handled it. We should all be so quick to use our knowledge to teach.