“What now” my sister exclaimed, “I thought that Mr. Korodo was talking about something that had happened there at that place where he was picking out some resin (smola) out of that tree in “New Visnjan”. And  pretending anger she threw the piece of treebark with the resin in it through my room from one corner to the other.

So my good sister thought that the 1908 meteorite-explosion had taken place in Višnjan instead of in Tunguska!

So, really, there is quite a lot of work in the field of education, Mr. Korodo, even if we think we are clear and bistra in our explication people will misunderstand us. But for me, I was pleasantly surprised with all I learned on that afternoon of  14 April 2008.

 ***

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Saturn's F ring

Now I will as a present from my part give you at Višnjan (Sasa Zorkic suggested this) some information about the Saturn Observation Campaign, an amateur NASA organization, I am a member of.

Everybody can join this SOC, you only must 3 times a year tell the leading in Pasadena  about  presentation you made  pictures of Saturn you have taken. See under.

This SOC is meant as a PR,  a publicity movement, to make the extremely expensive Cassini-Huygens project to Saturn acceptable for the Americans (who paid 75 % ) and for the people of the other participating countries. The cost was estimated 3,3 milliard dollars.

So first I must recall the start of the Cassini-Huygens on 15th of October 1997

For this unbelievably long yourney to Saturn, they started by sending the spacecraft in the opposite direction!! By doing so, they gave it a "slingshot effect" by sending it twice around Venus, then around the earth and fiinally around Jupiter. (VVEJ) In between it did a nice job by sending fotos and data of the planet of Jupiter in good cooperation with the Galileo-craft there. If they had not sent the craft this detour around the other planets, the yourney would have taken twice the time it takes now.

Natural decay of plutonium generates heat which generates electricity. NASA stated, that all precautions were taken to exclude accidents during the earth swingby on 18 August 1999.

Seven years later 101 07 2004 the craft arrived at Saturns rings, dived through the gap between the F and G ring, found there its periapsis by means of retrorockets and started the first of its 120 orbits up till now.

The newly-announced two-year extension will include 60 more orbits around the Saturn system with 26 more flyby’s of Titan.

Titan!! The Huygens space ship had a hitched ride on NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Together Cassini and Huygens made an unprecedented joint space mission. And then  on 14 January 2005 Huygens parachuted to the surface of Titan after a dive of three weeks all on its own without any propulsion.

 At the landing site we  saw rounded ice pebbles, The Surface Science Instruments detected when Huygens touched down that the spacecraft had come to rest in compacted gravel.

And then all these pictures from Titans surface we got. I think everybody wil have seen these pictures.

If you are interested, here is a link that gives information, also about the SOC (on the left side). Some years ago I had a presentation in Murska Sobota, Slovenija, with powerpoint translated into Sloven. My talk then was in English.

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov 

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(24.04.2008.)

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Cassini još dvije godine oko Saturna