Sunday 29 April 2012

Nature imitates Art (Off topics)

Pan (a.k.a Saturn XVIII) is the innermost moon of the most of 50 satellites of Saturn. It is a walnut-shaped small moon about 35 km across and 23 km high that orbits within the Encke Gap in Saturn's A Ring. It was discovered by Mark R. Showalter in 1990 from analysis of old Voyager 2 probe pictures dating from 1981.


Pan acts like a ring shepherd moon (Pan, son of Hermes and a nymph, was the Greek god of shepherds and flocks, nature, of mountain wilds, hunting and rustic music) and is responsible for keeping the Encke Gap free of ring particles which accumulate on its equatorial ridge, giving Pan its peculiar walnut-shaped aspect recreated by the scientists from the Cassini Mission data in the opening picture.

Seeing the Pan image, immediately come to mind images of floating islands or UFOs as those accompanying this post, that were imagined and drawn long before the image of Pan was known.

Is nature imitating art or just anything we can imagine can exist?

Thanks to the blog La ciencia y sus demonios to rescue this image)



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2 comments:

  1. Weird but wonderful. You may be too young to remember Rafa, but it reminds me of the artwork on the old "Yes" album covers!

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