Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Cassini spots windmill at outer rings of Saturn

PASADENA, California -- An odd, four-sailed, windmill-shaped feature passing the outer rings of Saturn has captured the interest of scientists with NASA's Cassini mission.

"This is a very strange object, lying in a precise geometric fashion with four nearly equally straight sides," said Dr Henk Nisesui, atmospheric expert and member of Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

NASA authorities have been working closely with the Australian atmospherics team at Parkes Radio Observatory even since the windmills escaped Australian airspace on January 28. "It is astounding that a windmill from the Breath of Life art installation in Newcastle Australia has reached the outer reaches of our solar system". Dr Niseusi remarked. Cassini scientists have calculated that at this rate it will leave the Solar System around February 17.

"We've never seen anything like this pass any other planet, yet there it is" he said.

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