It seems to be a given that gas giants have rings. However,Saturn has rings that are far larger than any others in the Solar System, and far more visible as well. What is unique to Saturn that it has such a large and complex ring system? Images from Wikipedia, in order of planet, Jupiter, Saturn,...
I feel really weird bringing this up, but I believe that instead of closing this you could add one of those little notice thingys that say, 'related to a rapidly changing event'. Would that be more appropriate?
At midnight on October 1, 2013 the US government entered the state of government shutdown where all functions deemed non-essential are suspended.
How did this shutdown affect NASA operations?
While I do not object to the use of astronaut as inclusive of cosmonauts, taikonauts (which Wikipedia indicates is a media term with limited use), astronauts "proper", and any other 'naut, even within an English-language site I do not know if such is insensitive to the activity of "non-Western" (...
I think I need to learn the First Amendment (+: Seriously, it's difficult enough for a layman to comprehend legalese - even if it is merely the constitution of an organization, let alone the constitution of a whole nation! And the collegium system is confusing to someone like me habituated to the Indian Constitution which, in turn, apparently borrowed heavily from the British
In the National Archives, they have a high fidelity copy of the Magna Carta, right next to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
> When you say "cosmonauts" are you referring to Russian spacefarers? Because if you are using it to refer to non-Russian astronauts, that is non-standard usage that we don't recommend on this site.
I know a guy who works for mission control who would probably be able to give some insight on this from a NASA perspective, but I don't know if I still have contact information for him.
@PearsonArtPhoto I closed that "Will NASA really..." question. It has nothing to do with Space Exploration, short of abusing NASA's name now that they're on hold. Brace for more possible questions like this, because there's nobody to protect the general populace from traps like this, at least in the US and for the time being.
It is a hoax. 100% no doubt about it. And I give you my permission to quote me on it. But here's the thing. While I may be an information security professional, Space Exploration isn't a website for this. IT Security would be, if it didn't come out as a legal advice, which is something much frowned upon on Stack Exchange for a plethora of reasons. There is also literally google number of websites out there that phish for user emails with various claims and no reassurances or legal gotchas explained, littering the Internet. If people are so naive to fall into an obvious trap, we can't do much about it. — TildalWave7 mins ago
I also can't advice strongly enough to immediately delete such links used not to forward new victims to such sites with seemingly our blessing to go there.
@TildalWave No problem, I thought about voting to close myself, but I wanted to see what you thought. I thought in the meantime that I would scrub the link and add a warning.
Also, I think that we should keep this question closed but not delete it. That way if we get more questions of the same sort we can quickly close them as duplicates instead of having to reargue the same reason for closing the original.
@PearsonArtPhoto no... there's not a single SE site to speculate on behalf of a profiteering, phishing third party. It would only advertise the phishing location more.
in fact, I'll look when I have the time if the OP is associated with the website posted in any way... in abt 20 min.
How about a new close reason "... of topic because it is about providing information or speculating about it on behalf of or about a third party that we don't associate with." something like that?
This question appears to be off-topic because it is ...
requesting to provide information on behalf of a disassociated third party. Questions seeking product or service recommendations, or asking to provide legal advice of, about or on behalf of a third party we don't associate with, their pr...
How's this?
should cover product recommendation and legal advice at the same time
OK, about Nili Patera areology ... I was looking at some THEMIS and HIRISE images and something caught my eye ... not the dunes, those are lovely and all, but some topology within the craters north to the dunes...
There are what appear to be some regular and seemingly predictable patterns forming that I can't explain... like martians would be counting how many times Voyager 1 left the Solar system, there are lines... and I'm not sure if those are features of wind erosion and sedimentation, or actual rock.
but that one is not even that good of a representative of what I had in mind, this one is pretty close to Nili Patera dunes... but if you look up North towards the ridge, check inside the craters
but funny enough, these topological features only appear "in the valley" and they're utterly clean on the plato
So I'm not sure what question to ask, but I'm really curious what these lines are... should I ask about physical models explaining wind sedimentation of impact craters, or just ask in general (might not be specific enough)?
@UV-D Frankly, I would put in more if I had the time.
I'm not as "close" to the field of astronomy as I used to be, so it takes a lot more research for me to get up to speed--which takes time--time which I do not have.
I am in the midst of getting there, but am still in the first week of my self taught astro course, so it will be a long while before I have expert questions
@called2voyage I wouldn't say lack, Jon has hung around quite a lot
basically, the Republican leader of the House of Representatives refused to bring the bill for the budget to the table, because some of the fringe Republicans think that our new healthcare plan needs to be delayed.
@Undo - was there a meta post about one of my answers on astro? my inbox says that there was a comment on my recent answer that is not there now, but it alluded to a link t a post in meta, but I can no see it
@Undo was there a meta post about one of my answers on astro? my inbox says that there was a comment on my recent answer that is not there now, but it alluded to a link t a post in meta, but I can no see it
Previously I've already explained my worries about the future of Space.SE - now the end of public beta is about to come and according to Area 51 the site has good conditions.
Well, almost. Visits per day is too few, way below the expectations. Would it mean any trouble? Or is the site going to e...
@called2voyage You think? I didn't look in a few days... hang on
@UV-D Yar?
@PearsonArtPhoto that "will NASA announce..." question ... would you agree to move it to meta, so you can enjoy repcapping again through other answers of yours? :P
It would take 40 rep of your account, but I'm sure I can find 4 answers I didn't yet manage to upvote on my own to "mitigate" that LOL
At midnight on October 1, 2013 the US government entered the state of government shutdown where all functions deemed non-essential are suspended.
How did this shutdown affect NASA operations?
This question appears to be off-topic because it is ...
requesting to provide information on behalf of a disassociated third party. Questions seeking product or service recommendations, or asking to provide legal advice of, about or on behalf of a third party we don't associate with, their pr...
