Timeline Saturn
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Saturn's Rings: http://www.solarviews.com/eng/saturnbg.htm
The planet is the 6th from the Sun and is named for the father of Jupiter in Roman mythology. Its day is 10 hours and 39 minutes, and its year is 29.5 Earth years. The gaseous planet revolves at 22,000 miles per hour at its equator.
(NH, 3/97, p.70)(SFEC, 10/5/97, Z1 p.4)
If the Sun were a pumpkin one foot in diameter, Saturn would be a peach about 1025 feet away.
(SFEC, 4/30/00, Par p.9)
1226 Mar 4, Jupiter and Saturn appeared as one bright planet in the night sky. This did not happen again until Dec 21, 2020.
(https://tinyurl.com/y74xupnv) (NY Times, 12/20/20)
1345 Mar 20, A conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars was thought to be the "cause of plague epidemic."
(MC, 3/20/02)
1610 Galileo observed Saturn and noted that it appeared to be triple-bodied.
(NH, 10/1/04, p.28)
1623 Jul 16, A conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn was virtually impossible to see on Earth because of its apparent position near the sun.
(https://tinyurl.com/y74xupnv)
1625 Gian Domenico Cassini was born in Italy. He was an astrologer and then became an astronomer and was known in France as Jean-Dominique Cassini. At the Paris observatory he discovered the wide gap in the rings of Saturn now called the Cassini division, as well as four of the planet’s moons.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, Z1 p.4)
1655 Mar 25, Christiaan Huygens, Dutch inventor and astronomer, discovered Titan, Saturn's largest satellite.
(www.xs4all.nl/~carlkop/huyglens.html)
1656 Christiaan Huygens interpreted Saturn’s “ears" as a simple flat ring.
(NH, 10/1/04, p.29)
1659 Christiaan Huygens published “Systema Saturnium," his observations on Saturn.
(NH, 10/1/04, p.29)
1676 Jean-Domenique Cassini, director of the Paris Observatory, reported that there were 2 rings around Saturn separated by a gap that came to be called the Cassini Division.
(NH, 10/1/04, p.29)
1848 Sep 19, Hyperion, a moon of Saturn, was discovered by Bond (US) & Lassell (England).
(MC, 9/19/01)
1856 James Maxwell deduced that the Saturn rings cannot be solid and must be made of "an indefinite number of unconnected particles".
(www.solarviews.com/eng/saturnbg.htm)
1899 Mar 18, Phoebe, a moon of Saturn, was discovered by Pickering.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1962 Feb 5, Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter & Saturn aligned within a 16 degree arc.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1977 Aug 20, The United States launched Voyager 2, an unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature. It was scheduled to pass Jupiter and Saturn.
(V.D.-H.K.p.388)(MofE, 1978, p.41)(AP, 8/20/97)(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A14)
1979 Sep 1, Pioneer 11 made the 1st fly-by of Saturn and discovered new moon rings. Ring F of Saturn was discovered by Lonny Baker at NASA's Ames Research Center from data sent by Pioneer 11.
(Ind, 7/27/99, p.1A)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_11)
1980 Nov 12, The US space probe Voyager 1 came within 77,000 miles of Saturn.
(AP, 11/12/97)(http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/science/saturn.html)
1981 Aug 25, The US spacecraft Voyager 2 came within 63,000 miles of Saturn's cloud cover, sending back pictures and data about the ringed planet and its moons.
(AP, 8/25/97)(http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/science/planetary.html)
1989 Nov 12, A triple conjunction of Neptune and Saturn took place.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_conjunction)
1997 Oct 13, The Cassini spacecraft was scheduled to be launched aboard a Titan rocket from Cape Canaveral for a trip to end in 2004 at Saturn. It will carry the Huygens probe to be deployed on the Saturn moon Titan.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, Z1 p.1)
1997 Oct 15, NASA's plutonium-powered Cassini spacecraft rocketed flawlessly toward Saturn. The $3.3 billion Cassini-Huygens Mission was scheduled to arrive on July 1, 2004.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A3)(AP, 10/15/98)(SSFC, 6/27/04, p.A1)
1998 Apr 8, It was reported that Europe’s Infrared Space Observatory discovered water around stars and planets. Water vapor in the atmosphere of Titan was reported.
(SFC, 4/898, p.A8)
2004 Jun 30, The Cassini probe entered Saturn’s orbit for 4 years of explorations. Its 4-year mission included a close approach to Saturn’s 3rd moon Iapetus.
(Econ, 4/24/04, p.83)(WSJ, 7/1/04, p.A1)
2004 Jul 1, The Cassini spacecraft sent back photographs of Saturn's shimmering rings.
(AP, 7/1/05)
2004 Aug 16, Astronomers reported the discovery of 2 additional moons orbiting Saturn, bringing the total to 33.
(SFC, 8/17/04, p.A8)
2004 Oct 26, Spacecraft Cassini flew within 745 miles of Titan providing scientists with new images of the Saturn largest moon.
(SFC, 10/27/04, p.A4)
2004 Nov 6, The Cassini spacecraft was scheduled to launch its Huygens probe onto Titan. [see Dec 24]
(SFEC, 10/5/97, Z1 p.4)
2004 Dec 24, The Huygens space probe was fired from the international Cassini spacecraft into a successful free fall from Saturn’s orbit to its moon, Titan.
(SFC, 12/25/04, p.A1)(AP, 12/24/05)
2005 Jan 13, The European-built space probe Huygens entered the atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.
(Reuters, 1/14/05)
2005 Jan 14, The European space probe Huygens landed on Saturn's moon Titan, sending back images of what scientists were calling the strangest landscape in the solar system. Pictures showed a pale orange surface covered by a thin haze of methane and what appears to be a methane sea complete with islands and a mist-shrouded coastline.
(AP, 1/15/05)(http://huygens.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=36280)
2005 The Cassini spacecraft spotted plumes of water vapor shooting into space from the southern pole of Enceladus, one of the moons of Saturn.
(Econ, 9/9/17, p.76)
2007 Mar 1, NASA said the Cassini spacecraft has snapped never-before-seen images of Saturn showing the planet from perspectives above and below its ring system.
(Reuters, 3/1/07)
2008 Mar 26, Scientists said the basic ingredients for life: warmth, water and organic chemicals, are in place on Saturn's small moon Enceladus, in detailing the content of huge plumes erupting off its surface.
(Reuters, 3/26/08)
2009 Jun 25, Scientists reported new evidence that one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, has an ocean beneath its surface.
(AP, 6/25/09)
2009 Oct 6, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said the Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered the biggest but never-before-seen ring around the planet Saturn. The diffuse ring doesn't reflect much visible light and is so huge it would take 1 billion Earths to fill it.
(AP, 10/6/09)
2009 Oct 7, Pedro Elias Zadunaisky (b.1917), Argentine astronomer and mathematician, died. His calculations helped determine the orbit of Saturn's outermost moon, Phoebe, as well as Halley's Comet.
(AP, 10/7/09)
2015 Mar 11, Scientists reported that evidence from the Cassini spacecraft has indicated there might be hot springs under the ice of Enceladus, one of the moons of Saturn.
(SFC, 3/12/15, p.A3)
2017 Apr 27, NASA said its unmanned Cassini spacecraft has survived its plunge between the rings of Saturn and, after briefly going dark for the flyby, is communicating again with Earth.
(AP, 4/27/17)
2017 Sep 15, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, launched in 1997, burned up in a fiery dive into Saturn, where it had been circling since 2004.
(SFC, 9/16/17 p.A8)
2019 Oct 7, The Carnegie Institute for Science announced that 20 new moons have been found around Saturn, giving the ringed planet a total of 82. This beat Jupiter with its 79 moons.
(SFC, 10/9/19, p.A4)
2020 Dec 21, Jupiter and Saturn appeared as one bright planet in the night sky. The last time they came this visibly close to each other was in the year 1226.
(NY Times, 12/20/20)
Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com
Subject = Saturn
End of File
Return to home
Saturn's Rings: http://www.solarviews.com/eng/saturnbg.htm
The planet is the 6th from the Sun and is named for the father of Jupiter in Roman mythology. Its day is 10 hours and 39 minutes, and its year is 29.5 Earth years. The gaseous planet revolves at 22,000 miles per hour at its equator.
(NH, 3/97, p.70)(SFEC, 10/5/97, Z1 p.4)
If the Sun were a pumpkin one foot in diameter, Saturn would be a peach about 1025 feet away.
(SFEC, 4/30/00, Par p.9)
1226 Mar 4, Jupiter and Saturn appeared as one bright planet in the night sky. This did not happen again until Dec 21, 2020.
(https://tinyurl.com/y74xupnv) (NY Times, 12/20/20)
1345 Mar 20, A conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Mars was thought to be the "cause of plague epidemic."
(MC, 3/20/02)
1610 Galileo observed Saturn and noted that it appeared to be triple-bodied.
(NH, 10/1/04, p.28)
1623 Jul 16, A conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn was virtually impossible to see on Earth because of its apparent position near the sun.
(https://tinyurl.com/y74xupnv)
1625 Gian Domenico Cassini was born in Italy. He was an astrologer and then became an astronomer and was known in France as Jean-Dominique Cassini. At the Paris observatory he discovered the wide gap in the rings of Saturn now called the Cassini division, as well as four of the planet’s moons.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, Z1 p.4)
1655 Mar 25, Christiaan Huygens, Dutch inventor and astronomer, discovered Titan, Saturn's largest satellite.
(www.xs4all.nl/~carlkop/huyglens.html)
1656 Christiaan Huygens interpreted Saturn’s “ears" as a simple flat ring.
(NH, 10/1/04, p.29)
1659 Christiaan Huygens published “Systema Saturnium," his observations on Saturn.
(NH, 10/1/04, p.29)
1676 Jean-Domenique Cassini, director of the Paris Observatory, reported that there were 2 rings around Saturn separated by a gap that came to be called the Cassini Division.
(NH, 10/1/04, p.29)
1848 Sep 19, Hyperion, a moon of Saturn, was discovered by Bond (US) & Lassell (England).
(MC, 9/19/01)
1856 James Maxwell deduced that the Saturn rings cannot be solid and must be made of "an indefinite number of unconnected particles".
(www.solarviews.com/eng/saturnbg.htm)
1899 Mar 18, Phoebe, a moon of Saturn, was discovered by Pickering.
(MC, 3/18/02)
1962 Feb 5, Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter & Saturn aligned within a 16 degree arc.
(MC, 2/5/02)
1977 Aug 20, The United States launched Voyager 2, an unmanned spacecraft carrying a 12-inch copper phonograph record containing greetings in dozens of languages, samples of music and sounds of nature. It was scheduled to pass Jupiter and Saturn.
(V.D.-H.K.p.388)(MofE, 1978, p.41)(AP, 8/20/97)(SFEC, 9/28/97, p.A14)
1979 Sep 1, Pioneer 11 made the 1st fly-by of Saturn and discovered new moon rings. Ring F of Saturn was discovered by Lonny Baker at NASA's Ames Research Center from data sent by Pioneer 11.
(Ind, 7/27/99, p.1A)(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pioneer_11)
1980 Nov 12, The US space probe Voyager 1 came within 77,000 miles of Saturn.
(AP, 11/12/97)(http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/science/saturn.html)
1981 Aug 25, The US spacecraft Voyager 2 came within 63,000 miles of Saturn's cloud cover, sending back pictures and data about the ringed planet and its moons.
(AP, 8/25/97)(http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/science/planetary.html)
1989 Nov 12, A triple conjunction of Neptune and Saturn took place.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triple_conjunction)
1997 Oct 13, The Cassini spacecraft was scheduled to be launched aboard a Titan rocket from Cape Canaveral for a trip to end in 2004 at Saturn. It will carry the Huygens probe to be deployed on the Saturn moon Titan.
(SFEC, 10/5/97, Z1 p.1)
1997 Oct 15, NASA's plutonium-powered Cassini spacecraft rocketed flawlessly toward Saturn. The $3.3 billion Cassini-Huygens Mission was scheduled to arrive on July 1, 2004.
(SFC,10/16/97, p.A3)(AP, 10/15/98)(SSFC, 6/27/04, p.A1)
1998 Apr 8, It was reported that Europe’s Infrared Space Observatory discovered water around stars and planets. Water vapor in the atmosphere of Titan was reported.
(SFC, 4/898, p.A8)
2004 Jun 30, The Cassini probe entered Saturn’s orbit for 4 years of explorations. Its 4-year mission included a close approach to Saturn’s 3rd moon Iapetus.
(Econ, 4/24/04, p.83)(WSJ, 7/1/04, p.A1)
2004 Jul 1, The Cassini spacecraft sent back photographs of Saturn's shimmering rings.
(AP, 7/1/05)
2004 Aug 16, Astronomers reported the discovery of 2 additional moons orbiting Saturn, bringing the total to 33.
(SFC, 8/17/04, p.A8)
2004 Oct 26, Spacecraft Cassini flew within 745 miles of Titan providing scientists with new images of the Saturn largest moon.
(SFC, 10/27/04, p.A4)
2004 Nov 6, The Cassini spacecraft was scheduled to launch its Huygens probe onto Titan. [see Dec 24]
(SFEC, 10/5/97, Z1 p.4)
2004 Dec 24, The Huygens space probe was fired from the international Cassini spacecraft into a successful free fall from Saturn’s orbit to its moon, Titan.
(SFC, 12/25/04, p.A1)(AP, 12/24/05)
2005 Jan 13, The European-built space probe Huygens entered the atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.
(Reuters, 1/14/05)
2005 Jan 14, The European space probe Huygens landed on Saturn's moon Titan, sending back images of what scientists were calling the strangest landscape in the solar system. Pictures showed a pale orange surface covered by a thin haze of methane and what appears to be a methane sea complete with islands and a mist-shrouded coastline.
(AP, 1/15/05)(http://huygens.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=36280)
2005 The Cassini spacecraft spotted plumes of water vapor shooting into space from the southern pole of Enceladus, one of the moons of Saturn.
(Econ, 9/9/17, p.76)
2007 Mar 1, NASA said the Cassini spacecraft has snapped never-before-seen images of Saturn showing the planet from perspectives above and below its ring system.
(Reuters, 3/1/07)
2008 Mar 26, Scientists said the basic ingredients for life: warmth, water and organic chemicals, are in place on Saturn's small moon Enceladus, in detailing the content of huge plumes erupting off its surface.
(Reuters, 3/26/08)
2009 Jun 25, Scientists reported new evidence that one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, has an ocean beneath its surface.
(AP, 6/25/09)
2009 Oct 6, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said the Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered the biggest but never-before-seen ring around the planet Saturn. The diffuse ring doesn't reflect much visible light and is so huge it would take 1 billion Earths to fill it.
(AP, 10/6/09)
2009 Oct 7, Pedro Elias Zadunaisky (b.1917), Argentine astronomer and mathematician, died. His calculations helped determine the orbit of Saturn's outermost moon, Phoebe, as well as Halley's Comet.
(AP, 10/7/09)
2015 Mar 11, Scientists reported that evidence from the Cassini spacecraft has indicated there might be hot springs under the ice of Enceladus, one of the moons of Saturn.
(SFC, 3/12/15, p.A3)
2017 Apr 27, NASA said its unmanned Cassini spacecraft has survived its plunge between the rings of Saturn and, after briefly going dark for the flyby, is communicating again with Earth.
(AP, 4/27/17)
2017 Sep 15, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, launched in 1997, burned up in a fiery dive into Saturn, where it had been circling since 2004.
(SFC, 9/16/17 p.A8)
2019 Oct 7, The Carnegie Institute for Science announced that 20 new moons have been found around Saturn, giving the ringed planet a total of 82. This beat Jupiter with its 79 moons.
(SFC, 10/9/19, p.A4)
2020 Dec 21, Jupiter and Saturn appeared as one bright planet in the night sky. The last time they came this visibly close to each other was in the year 1226.
(NY Times, 12/20/20)
Go to http://www.timelinesdb.com
Subject = Saturn
End of File
