Chapter 35 Chapter Eleven Strange Saturn

A month has passed.Gallia remained unharmed in its orbit.Those who come from the earth are few in number, but they can unite and help each other.Only the scum of Isaac, mercenary and greedy, was the only blemish on this little society. In fact, they just got together temporarily for a trip around the solar system.Once the two-year trip is over, their ship will dock on Earth.If Professor Rosset's calculation is correct, then they will leave the comet and return to the earth. As for whether the ship will encounter great difficulties or dangers when it docks on the earth, it is hard to predict now, and we can only talk about it in due time.

Earl Iron Mashov, Captain Selvadak, and Second Officer Prokop are more confident about whether they can return to Earth in the near future, so they no longer need to store food, develop Gulby Island and breed Livestock and wasted energy. How many sleepless nights have they spent discussing together how to develop this small planet if they cannot go back.In order to enable everyone to survive, in order to safely pass through the long and severe winter, how many jobs they have never encountered before!But now, all of this need not be considered. On the 1st and 15th, the comet will reach its aphelion.Since then, its speed has become faster and faster, and it has begun its voyage closer to the sun.But it will still take nine to ten months before the snow melts and the earth returns to spring.At that time, we can go back to Goulby Island on the Dobrina and the Hansa.Summers in Galia are short and hot, and people will hurry up to work the land.Within a few months of planting the seeds, the crops will be ready to be harvested.People will live a colorful pastoral life on the island.Soon the severe winter will come, and people will return to the "warm land" to live in caves.

Yes, they will go back to the warm cave for the winter.But wouldn't they be able to go a little further afield and see if they could find an easy coal seam?Might they not build houses on Gulby Island that would withstand the cold and be more comfortable? of course can.Long-term living in caves has negative effects on people, both mentally and physically. In order to get rid of this kind of life, of course they will do this.Only Professor Rosset, who is immersed in those astronomical figures all day, will be content with the status quo and will not consider its adverse consequences at all.

Besides, there was always a potential danger in living in a cave.This is whether the volcano on which the whole cave is kept warm will suddenly go out at some point?The magma erupted from the inside of the volcano will always dry up.Once the lava stops erupting, how will Selvadak and others resist the biting cold?Of course, this danger did not seem so imminent at present, and it was hoped that it would not occur before they left Gallia. On December 15th, Gallia was 864 million kilometers away from the sun, and it only traveled 44 million to 48 million kilometers in a month. The Galians, especially Professor Rosset, now showed a new world.After observing Jupiter, the professor is now concentrating on observing Saturn again.

Gallia was only 52 million kilometers away from Jupiter the last time, but this time it is 692 million kilometers away from the strange planet Saturn.Therefore, there is no need to worry about how much the gravitational force of the Shi star will have on Galia. Professor Rosset is still standing by the telescope all day long, making careful observations of the planet.But if you ask him about the observation results, he can't tell much. Fortunately, there were several popular books on astronomy in the library of the Dobrina.Second officer Prokop extracted the part about Saturn and explained it to everyone.

At this time, Saturn is 700 million kilometers away from Gallia and 1,457.4 million kilometers away from the sun.Because the distance is too far, the light and heat it gets from the sun is only one percent of that of the earth at best. Saturn's revolution period is 29 years and 167 days, and it moves 35,432 kilometers per hour on its 9.15 billion kilometers long orbit.The circumference of Saturn's equator is 361,520 kilometers, the area is 40 billion square kilometers, and the volume is 670 billion cubic kilometers, which is 735 times larger than the earth, but smaller than Jupiter. Small.The mass of Saturn is only a hundred times larger than that of the earth, so its density is smaller than that of water.Saturn's rotation period is 10 hours and 29 minutes, so it takes 24,630 days to revolve around the sun once.Saturn's spin axis is at such a large angle to the plane of its orbit that each season is equivalent to seven Earth years.

Saturn's night sky is very beautiful, with eight moons orbiting it.In myths and legends, these moons have their own names, namely Mida, Anselade, Teti, Diona, Rea, Titang, Iparion and Yapa.Meda orbits Saturn in twenty-two and a half hours, while Yapa takes seventy-nine days.Yapa is 3.64 million kilometers away from Saturn, but Mida is only 136,000 kilometers away from Saturn.Three times smaller than the distance between the moon and the earth.Although the light transmitted by the sun is very weak, but because of the existence of these eight satellites, the night sky of Saturn must be very charming.

But what makes Saturn's night sky even more beautiful is undoubtedly the rings that surround it.Saturn seems to be inlaid in a glittering frame.You always stand under this halo which is 20,660 kilometers away from the surface of the soil, looking up at the sky, and all you can see is a very narrow band of light.Herschel thought it was only 400 kilometers wide.So it just looks like a bright beam of light shooting into space.But if you move a few kilometers north and south, you can see that this belt of light is gradually divided into three halos, the inner one is in the shape of a dark cloud with a width of 12,504 kilometers, and the middle one is the brightest — brighter than the star itself — 29,552 kilometers across, the outer one, pale gray, 14,712 kilometers across.

It takes ten hours and thirty-two minutes for the halo to revolve around Shixing.What material is the halo made of?Why can enduring?No one can tell why.It seems that this was intentionally arranged by the Creator to enlighten people about the formation process of various celestial bodies.Because this halo originally belonged to the same nebula as Saturn obviously.Later, most of the nebula gradually condensed to become Saturn, while the other part remained in the sky, becoming the halo that people see today.For unknown reasons, the halo itself may have frozen as well.Therefore, if the halo breaks, it will become countless fragments and fall to the surface of Saturn, or revolve around Saturn and become a new satellite.

If you stand in the vast area between the equator of the upper star and 45° north and south latitude, you can see the incomparably magnificent scenery presented by these three halos.Sometimes they cut through the sky like a huge rainbow, and sometimes they form a huge bridge arch in the sky, and the vault is covered by Saturn's own shadow, so there is a large gap.From time to time they shade the sun.The sun comes and goes between its gaps punctually, forming a beautiful scene of alternating day and night.In addition, there are eight moons rising and setting on the horizon of Saturn. Some of them are full moons as round as silver basins, some are crescent moons, and some are crescent moons.Therefore, watching the night sky on Saturn really feels like being in a fairy tale world.

However, due to the distance, the Galians cannot see this beauty.Astronomers on Earth can see better than they do with better telescopes.Therefore, if Servadac and others want to understand the situation of the Saturn world, they can only rely on those few popular books.However, this is also good, they no longer have to worry about whether this huge planet will capture Gallia. Uranus is even further away from Gallia.Although its volume is eighty-two times that of the earth, it looks like a sixth-magnitude star.It is only visible to the naked eye when it is very close to Earth.As for its eight satellites, that's even harder to see.The revolution period of Uranus is 84 years, and the average distance from the sun is 2.916 billion kilometers. As for Neptune, the last planet in the solar system—it is only so far to say that it is the last one. It is impossible to say that Le Verrier will discover another planet further away sometime in the future! ——Selvadak and others don't even want to see it.Palmierian Roset presumably could have seen it through his telescope, but he didn't tell anyone about his observations.Servadak and others had no choice but to seek advice from books again. The average distance between Neptune and the sun is 4.56 billion kilometers, and the revolution period is 165 years.It runs 20,000 kilometers per hour on an orbit 28.68 billion kilometers long.Its volume is one hundred and five times larger than that of the earth.It has a satellite which is 400,000 kilometers away. Neptune may be a planet on the edge of the solar system, which is as far as 4.6 billion kilometers from the sun.This shows how big the solar system is.However, no matter how big the solar system is, it is just a drop in the ocean in the whole galaxy.Because in the Milky Way, it is only equivalent to a fourth-magnitude star.So if Gallia were to step out of the solar system, where would it go?Which star will it be attached to orbit in space?It is likely to throw itself into the embrace of the closest star to the sun, Alpha Centauri.The speed of light is 300,000 kilometers per second, and it takes three and a half years to travel from Afar to the solar system.How big is this distance?To express it numerically, astronomers would have to use "billion" as the unit, that is to say, the distance from Alfa to the solar system should be 32,000 "billion" kilometers. So far, how many stars have known the distance from the earth?Only eight at most.For example, Vega is 100 billion kilometers away from us, Sirius is 20.88 trillion kilometers away from us, Polaris is 4.7004 trillion kilometers away from us, and Aphrodite in Auriga It is 6.816 trillion kilometers away from us. In order to better illustrate the distances of these stars from us, we might as well borrow some metaphors based on the speed of light made by some quick-witted scientists: "If a person has very good eyesight, he can see to infinity. If he looks at the earth from the distance of the planet Alpha in the constellation Auriga, what he sees will be what happened on the earth seventy-two years ago. If He looked at the earth from a planet ten times farther away than the one just now, and what caught his eyes was what happened on the earth seven hundred and twenty years ago. If he had to walk eighteen hundred years from the light If he looks at the earth from a farther planet, then what he sees is the scene of the martyrdom of Christ. If he goes further and looks at the earth from a place that only takes six thousand years to reach, he can see Seeing the tragic scene of the flood era. The universe is infinite. If he goes further, he can see how God created the world as mentioned in the Bible. Because from the perspective of the entire universe, everything is It is eternal, and once it happens it never goes away." Perhaps the adventurous Palmieri Rosette was right in thinking of wandering the Milky Way, where there must be many beauties of incomparable beauty.How many different galaxies he would have seen had his comet passed in and out of the stars.When Gallia is orbiting among the stars, the stars seem to be motionless on the surface, but they are actually moving. For example, the star Alpha in the constellation Bootes is moving at a speed of 48 kilometers per second.The sun is also moving towards Hercules at a speed of 248 million kilometers per year.Although their movement speed is so fast, because the distance between them is so far away, it is difficult for people on the earth to see the change of their position. Because the movement speed of each star is different, their movement over the years will one day change the shape of the constellation.Astronomers have been able to point out how these stars have changed relative to each other over many years.The shape of certain constellations after 50,000 years has been mapped.For example, the constellation Ursa Major at that time will no longer look like an irregular quadrilateral, but a long cross, and Orion will no longer be a pentagon, but a quadrilateral. But whether it is the Galians or the people on the earth, it is impossible for them to witness the changes of these constellations with their own eyes.It was not in order to observe this change that Palmieri Rosette wanted to travel the Milky Way.He wanted to take advantage of the opportunity of comets moving among the stars to see wonders that cannot be seen in the solar system. Because in distant space, that group of planets is not always "ruled" by a single sun, "tyranny" seems to be non-existent in some parts of space.There are often two or even six suns, which are attached together under the mutual gravitational force.The light from these stars tends to vary from red, yellow, green, orange and indigo.What a dazzling sight it would be when these stars beamed different colors of light onto the surfaces of their planets.As Gallia moves among these stars, it may be illuminated all day long by a multicolored glow like a rainbow. But it is absolutely impossible for Galia to go to the Milky Way to orbit a certain star or star cluster, nor to cruise in a constellation that has not been fully understood so far, and it is even more impossible to go to a dense space that even a reflecting telescope cannot see clearly. In the nebula, this kind of nebula is widely distributed in space, and astronomers have discovered more than 5,000. No!Gallia will never leave the solar system, never abandon Earth.It completes a circle on its own orbit, although it is 2.52 billion kilometers, but in the vast and boundless universe, this is just a very insignificant trip.