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May 19: Rings of Neptune The rings of Neptune were discovered in 1989 by the Voyager 2 spacecraft and are tenuous, faint and dusty, and resemble the rings of Jupiter more closely than those of Saturn or Uranus. Neptune possesses five known rings, each named for an astronomer who contributed important work on the planet: the Galle, Le Verrier, Lassell, Arago and Adams rings. Neptune ...
December 4: Saturn Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter, with an average radius about nine times larger than the Earth's. Saturn is named after the Roman god Saturn, equated to the Greek Cronus (the Titan father of Zeus), the Babylonian Ninurta and the Hindu Shani. Saturn's astronomical symbol (?) represents ...
Scientists Say Space Junk at Tipping Point U S scientists say that the amount of space junk orbiting Earth has reached a tipping point, as enough is currently in orbit to cause continual collisions that will create even more debris and further raise the risk of collisions. There are tens of thousands of pieces of debris large enough to track from the ground and untold numbers of ...
Ice Found on Asteroid An asteroid orbiting the sun between Mars and Saturn is adding credence to the theory that asteroids and comets are the source of Earth's water and organic material. Scientists observing 24 Themis, an asteroid about 300 million miles (479 million kilometers) from the sun, found that it contains both water--in the form of ice--and organic compounds. Before this observation was ...
Cloisonné Likely invented in the Middle East but later perfected by the Chinese, Japanese, and French, cloisonné is an ancient method of decorating metals with enamel. It involves adhering metal wire to a metal object in a specific pattern, filling the resulting compartments with colored enamel paste, and firing the object to fuse the enamel to its surface. The earliest surviving ...