Titan's Shadow: A Once in a Millenium Celestial Alignment

Found another really cool observation done by the Chandra X-Ray telescope way back in 2003. With all the hype about celestial alignments and 2012 hysteria about the Sun/Earth/Galactic Center alignment, I thought I'd present a truly once in a millenium event that was actually very useful and helped get some great science done.

Titan actually cast an X-Ray shadow against the Crab Nebula, and it won't happen again until 2267. I'd also like to point out that most people didn't even know it happened and the world never came to an end, the Earth's crust didn't start to rotate nor did the poles shift.

We did get some cool pictures though!

=========

Here's a link to the NASA/Chandra Press Release done in 2003:
http://chandra.harvard.edu/press/04_releases/press_040504.html

Music Used:

Green Man, track MoodBall. available here:

http://www.garageband.com/artist/green_man

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Titan
• Saturn
• chandra telescope
• x-rays
• celestial alignment
• astronomy
• cosmology

[Translicc]

tdarnell, thanks for the video again! It's pretty impressive they found a way to examine the atmosphere of titan. As AlvinHDavernport is saying, how is your work progression? Keep up these videos!

[tdarnell]

@Translicc Things are going well. I plan to make some vids in the coming weeks about my work on the Dark Energy Survey as well as the science behind what we're trying to accomplish.

[AlvinHDavernport]

By the way, tdarnell, your work is superb in every aspect.Thanks for making astronomy **even more** enjoyable than it already is. I hope things are going well with your research on dark energy--and I'm assuming you're still working on that.

[tdarnell]

@AlvinHDavernport Thanks! As for my work on the Dark Energy Survey, things are progressing. We are in the middle of a data challenge (a simulation run) of our data pipeline, so I've been a little busy these past months, but things are going great.

[1RadicalOne]

Congratulations, TDarnell. You precipitated an edit to Wikipedia. ;)

[Crab Nebula is on my watchlist, and thus I saw the edit, not-so-coincidentally made today, soon after this video's upload.]

[tdarnell]

@1RadicalOne Wow, that's really cool. I liked the additional information, it was more thorough than the what was on NASA's website about this.

For example, it says this alignment last occurred in 1296, while I was under the impression it hadn't happened at all. I thought 2003 was the first.

Thanks!

[jessemaurais]

Science: getting us closer to the truth one measurement at a time.

[krobinson95]

You have a great voice. You should branch out and do more videos.

[satsumamoon]

I like the music over the video.

[toast3551]

Please cut out the ridiculous music. Why do people think that science has to be romanticized with music to make it palatable?

[ManlyMuscleDad]

Great video.

[RealHeisKa]

that nebulas size compared to the planet..

[johnmarkgeneral0123]

WOW!!!! this video is so amazing

[kristianjensendk]

i love your vids

[Garo48]

What is the music? Nice information!! Thanks!!

[xaviarthunders]

Great vid! but omg the song is painful.

[Grospoliner]

Dwarf planet is still a planetary object, not that that is really relevant to what I was discussing. I for one am not compelled to tack on the unneeded qualifier when unnecessary.