It says "Vote Gore. Fate of Earth at stake!"

Damn time delay.

reminds me of "Forbidden Planet".

So the satellite dropped a record needle on the rings? Is Saturn an LP?

Thats the best video of the "spokes" on the rings I've ever seen, as I recall they are believed to be statically suspended dust planes above the ring plane.

Here is my own personal best results capturing Saturn from the backyard scope:
http://www.pbase.com/mclemens1969/image/94819121

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag.(show it anyway)

What causes all the radio signals from gas giants?

How are they translated from radio into sound? Is it kind of an arbitrary sampling where they pick a range?

This is very similar to what I mentioned here... Only I remember it being more boops and bleeps, but that may have just been disc 1.

More info on the CDs.



>> ^dag:
What causes all the radio signals from gas giants?


Due to the immense pressure of gravity, atoms bounce around and knock into each other and cause bursts of energy to be released in the form of photons. The energy in question can lie anywhere along the spectroscopic band depending on the frequency in which the wave is generated; visible light, gamma, microwave, radio, etc. In this case, it's radio.


How are they translated from radio into sound? Is it kind of an arbitrary sampling where they pick a range?


I'm going to assume that if you take the energy wave or "signature" and transpose it higher up on the band, to the realm of audible sound (by pushing that wave through a medium of air, rather than radio waves through the vacuum of space), you get the sound. The CD's I have really don't give an adequate explanation as to how they create the sound, but I have to assume it's the same principle which powers radio on Earth; the energy wave is broadcast out, and receivers/speakers translate the signal to a different medium.

My understanding going into this video and before reading the comments:

Everything (simplifying) radiates energy, which we visualise as a wave, and we label emitted energy as the electromagnetic spectrum.

Radio waves are just part of the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) in the same way as light is. They just have a certain frequency (or wavelength). For different ranges of frequencies of the EMS, you get different types of rays as we know it. Gamma rays, x-rays, UV rays, visible light, infrared, microwave, and finally radio waves. Gamma rays have the shortest wavelength and radio waves have the longest wavelength. They are all the exact same thing.

The longer the wavelength, the less energy the wave has and thus shorter wavelength = higher energy.

So for example, the sun. The sun is extremely hot and so emits a LOT of energy and so produces very high energy emissions including (amongst other things) light waves, which we can see with our eyes.

Saturn however is very cold and so the energy it emits is very low, meaning that it emits low frequency waves. The lowest frequency waves are what we refer to as radio waves.

So feed those radio waves into your average radio. The radio uses various algorithms and stuff to decode the signal that it recieves (a radio wave) into sound (another type of wave, unrelated and dissimilar), that we detect with our ears. The algorithms will do what they do and we get what you hear here.

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That's what i think, anyway. Dunno HOW the waves are produced, but the previous comment seems a reasonable source. I'll ask my dad tomorrow and let you know.

^I took AST 205: Stars and Galaxies awhile back and had to learn all about the particle physics, GUT and spectroscopy, etc.

Bear with me, it was a few semesters ago so I may forget/muddle some of the details. Basically, as the molecules of hydrogen, helium and other trace gases are squeezed together by gravity, the electron shells of the individual atoms begin to collide with one another. When they do, the electrons collide and change their orbit around the nucleus, and then revert back to their original orbit. This releases a store of energy as photons. The same thing happens when an X particle strikes a weak boson. The larger the bang, the farther the change in orbit and the more energy is released, when it returns back to its original orbit. Or something like that. Look up the Bohr model, Planck's Constant, etc for more info.

Long story short, the resulting photons which are released make up the electromagnetic energy in the universe, depending on frequency, etc.

It's all through measuring light via spectroscopy and a little triangulation that we can tell the size, rotation speeds, mass, velocity, age, composition, etc, of the stars and galaxies, nebulae and other celestial objects. Pretty crazy once you get your head all wrapped around it.

>> ^dag:
What causes all the radio signals from gas giants?
How are they translated from radio into sound? Is it kind of an arbitrary sampling where they pick a range?


http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/cassini-072505.html
"The high-resolution measurements allow scientists to convert the radio waves into audio recordings by shifting the frequencies down into the audio frequency range."

The audio is a representation of radio frequency signals measured at Saturn. The RF signals are described as 'kilometric' - which means wavelengths around a kilometer. This means they have a frequency around 300 kHz (on the lower side of AM radio) - since the speed of light is 300,000 km/s - i.e. a 1 km wave goes by at a frequency of 300,000 times per second. To let us hear the patterns in the signal, they shifted these RF signals down by a factor of 30 or so, and converted them to sound - around 10 kHz.

These RF signals are due to the motions of charged particles (electrons and protons) trapped in the magnetic field of Saturn. As the particles cycle back and forth along the magnetic fields, they move at different speeds and spread out, with different frequencies coming at different times. Converted to sound, it becomes these eerie tones.

The giant planets have very large magnetic fields. The charged particles come from the Sun, and also interact with the moons and rings. Jupiter has an even more powerful magnetic field, and radio bursts indicate that lightning bolts jump the space between Jupiter and the inner moons.

Here is a video that shows a model of Saturn's magnetic field.
The video must be correct, since the narrator has a british accent.
http://videos.howstuffworks.com/hsw/23337-saturn-composition-and-magnetic-fields-video.htm

Dig the sounds of the Gas Giants? Tune into Radio Free Uranus!