Saturn images, Lunar seas names, First web server

[Nostromics Newsletter]

Nostromics Newsletter

Nostromics science gifts product news, educational resources & science tidbits

Nostromics Newsletter, 13 October 2010 - You are welcome to share this mail

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Saturn images by the Cassini-Huygens mission

Saturn is probably the planet with the most spectacular alien world look in the Solar System. Its rich and ever changing system provides beautiful views of the planet's turbulent atmosphere, rings, shadows and many moons. The Cassini-Huygens unmanned mission by NASA has been orbiting Saturn and imaging these views since 2004.

The official Cassini site publishes many images taken by the spacecraft. But for sneak previews you may want to also check the CICLOPS (Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory of Operations) site managed by the Cassini Imaging Science Team. CICLOPS provides selected early previews of photos later posted to the main Cassini site. You can also create an account to rate images and comment them with other users.

Lunar seas names

The dark spots you see on the Moon with the naked eye are wide plains resulting from solidified lava filling preexisting large craters. These plains have poetic Latin names such as Mare Tranquillitatis (sea of tranquility) and Mare Crisium (sea of crises). Our Mare Tranquillitatis Tote Bag, Mare Crisium Beach Dark Sweatshirt and related designs in the Moon section of Nostromics Store are inspired by these fascinating ancient names, and feature a blue/cyan beach parasol drawing with the sea name above and Beach blue text below.

These lunar sea names (mare is the Latin for sea) date back to early 17th century. They were introduced by Italian Jesuit priest and scholar Giovanni Battista Riccioli (1598-1671), who published the astronomy treatise Almagestum Novum in 1651. The book mentioned these Latin names, inspired by human feelings and terrestrial phenomena attributed in antiquity to lunar influences on men and the Earth's environment. The current lunar nomenclature officially accepted by the International Astronomical Union still includes most of Riccioli's names for our satellite's imaginary seas.

More science gifts and products at Nostromics Store.

The first web server

The number of web sites has grown so large that it may be difficult to estimate. But we do know about the very first server and when it went online: on August 6, 1991.

The first web server was developed by the World Wide Web inventor, British engineer and computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee, while working at the CERN particle physics laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. The software run on his computer, a NeXTcube workstation. NeXTcube was an advanced workstation popular at scientific laboratories and academic institutions. It was manufactured until the early 1990s by NeXT, Inc., a company founded by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.

-- Paolo Amoroso & Mauro Arpino (Nostromics), science educators - Milan, Italy

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Copyright (C) 2010 by Paolo Amoroso and Mauro Arpino