Saturn

The book focuses on a category of works of art that blend within the same iconographic frame historical, mythical, even alchemical, themes revealing patrons’ intentions, ambitions and aspirations. Scenes of this kind can be traced in Florence between 1537, year of Cosimo I de Medici’s rise to power, and 1609, year of death of Ferdinand I, third Grand Duke of Tuscany. Consistent with the general concern of the period with the culture of the ancient world, the Medici not only appropriated exempla virtutis, but also intervened in person in the plot of the depicted mythological narratives, using them as vehicles for their political messages. The intellectual and visual culture of the time was, after all, linked with Mannerism, a style of excess, with preference for variety rather than unity and open to unexpected combinations. By encouraging their artists to add a diachronic dimension to the themes of art by connecting them with ancient myths, the Medici intended not ony to signal to contemporary Italian and European princes their magnificent status, but also to secure for themselves everlasting fame. Actually, they succeeded in establishing a dynasty that lasted for two hundred years.

This essay blends astrology and archetypal psychology — a discipline formulated by James Hillman that in the late 20th century emerged as a distinct field of study from the analytical psychology of Carl Gustav Jung. Before considering the main theme of this essay, a few remarks highlighting the principles of archetypal psychology will be given. In doing so, the ramifications of the Saturn archetype and its underlying principle of limitation may be more fully appreciated.

What are myths? Are there ‘correct’ and ‘incorrect’ versions? And where do they come from? These and many other related questions are addressed in Writing Down the Myths, a collection of critical studies of the contents of some of the most famous mythographic works from ancient, classical, medieval, and modern times, and of the methods, motivations, and ideological implications underlying these literary records of myth.

While there are many works on myth and mythology, and on the study of this genre of traditional narrative, there is little scholarship to date on the venerable activity of actually writing down the myths (mythography), attested throughout history, from the cultures of the ancient Middle East and the Mediterranean to those of the modern world. By assembling studies of the major literary traditions and texts through a variety of critical approaches, this collection poses - and seeks to answer - key questions such as these: how do the composers of mythographic texts choose their material and present them; what are the diverse reasons for preserving stories of mythological import and creating these mythographic vessels; how do the agenda and criteria of pre-modern writers still affect our popular and scholarly understanding of myth; and do mythographic texts (in which myths are, so to speak, captured by being written down) signal the rebirth, or the death, of mythology?

Saturn has been a source of interest and fascination for centuries.  Besides its rings, one of the most spectacular planetary features seen in the solar system, Saturn has several moons that present a potential habitable environment.  Some of these moons have liquid water or an impressive atmosphere worth studying in-depth.  This particular interest in Saturn led to a mission conducted by the biggest interplanetary unmanned probe ever built: the Cassini-Huygens mission.  Once inserted into Saturn’s orbit in 2004, the scientific instruments on board Cassini, particularly the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS), have collected an impressive amount of data leading to many new scientific discoveries.  The only other mission to ever study Saturn was Voyager. Equipped with the Infrared Interferometer Spectrometer and Radiometer (IRIS), considered a state of the art instrument in the seventies, Voyager was able to collect fascinating but insufficient data about Saturn.  Cassini’s role was to perform an in-depth study based on the data collected by Voyager.  This study is a comparison between the results of the two spectrometers, with the purpose to demonstrate that the Cassini spectrometer generated much more data and results than the Voyager spectrometer.

Melancholia has a deeper and more comprehensive meaning than sadness or blind love, which has been shown as its word meaning today and in the first form in which we have come to our mind. In this, the influence of ancient history is also great. As a term “melancholia” was firstly mentioned in BCE IVth centu-ry in Ancient Greece. As a term, the first definition of melancholia was encountered the Aphorisms of Hippocrates. Ancient Greek mythology and Homeric epics are considered the first written sources of psychological research. In these epics, the dialogues of the gods and heroes, their lifestyles, angers, delusions, illnesses and even treatment suggestions have shed light on melancholic re-search for thousands of years. Examples of mythological melancho-lia / psychosis, generally seen in people who had fell divine wrath, have provided important signs throughout the history of god-human relationships. In this article, firstly based on Greek mythol-ogy, we will determine the melancholic descriptions in Homeric epics. After this, we will try to understand to how have been con-tact a relation between Saturn and melancholia regarding human-planet interaction in Babylonian astrology.

This thesis is concerned with two subjects: principally euhemerism, but also intertextuality in early Christian literature.
All of the fragments of Thallus, a first or second century A.D. Greek historian, aredealtwithtosomeextent,andmostarere-evalutedtorenderasummaryofour informationon hislifeandwork.HishistoricizedrenderingofthemythicalTitanomachy,
however, serves as a focus for our investigation of the development of specific subjects in the Hellenistic tradition of euhemerism.
WetracehowtheauthoritativenameofThallusandsomeinformationfromhis
history was passed from Theophilus of Antioch to Tertullian, and from Tertullian to MinuciusFelix.WealsoevaluatethemannerinwhichThalluswas usedbyTertullianasa
euhemeristic and chronological source.

Saturn was observed by Chandra ACIS-S on 20 and 26-27 January 2004 for one full Saturn rotation (10.7 hr) at each epoch. We report here the first observation of an X-ray flare from Saturn's non-auroral (low-latitude) disk, which is seen in direct response to an M6-class flare emanating from a sunspot that was clearly visible from both Saturn and Earth. Saturn's disk X-ray emissions are found to be variable on time scales of hours to weeks to months, and correlated with solar F10.7 cm flux. Unlike Jupiter, X-rays from Saturn's polar (auroral) region have characteristics similar to those from its disk. This report, combined with earlier studies, establishes that disk X-ray emissions of the giant planets Saturn and Jupiter are directly regulated by processes happening on the Sun. We suggest that these emissions could be monitored to study X-ray flaring from solar active regions when they are on the far side and not visible to Near-Earth space weather satellites.

Although lightning has not been observed in Titan's atmosphere, the presence of methane rain in the troposphere suggests the possibility of electrical activity in the form of corona and/or lightning discharges. Here we examine the chemical effects of these electrical processes on a Titan simulated atmosphere composed of CH4 in N2 at various mixing ratios. Corona discharges were simulated in two different experimental arrays. For the detection of reactive intermediates we used a mass spectrometer to study the main positive ions arising by bombarding low-energy electrons from a hot filament into low-pressure methane. The final stable products, generated by applying a high voltage in a coaxial reactor with either positive or negative polarity, were separated and detected by gas chromatography-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and electron impact mass spectrometry (GC-FTIR-MS). Lightning discharges were simulated by a hot and dense plasma generated by a Nd-YAG laser and the final products were separated and detected by GC-FTIR-MS. Corona discharges produce linear and branched hydrocarbons as well as nitriles whereas lightning discharges generate mainly unsaturated hydrocarbons and nitriles. Lightning discharges are about 2 orders of magnitude more efficient in product formation than corona discharges.

Laser-induced plasmas in various gas mixtures were used to simulate lightning in other planetary atmospheres. This method of simulation has the advantage of producing short-duration, high-temperature plasmas free from electrode contamination. The laser-induced plasma discharges in air are shown to accurately simulate terrestrial lightning and can be expected to simulate lightning spectra in other planetary atmospheres. Spectra from 240 to 880 nm are presented for simulated lightning in the atmospheres of Venus, earth, Jupiter, and Titan. The spectra of lightning on the other giant planets are expected to be similar to that of Jupiter because the atmospheres of these planets are composed mainly of hydrogen and helium. The spectra of Venus and Titan show substantial amounts of radiation due to the presence of carbon atoms and ions and show CN Violet radiation. Although small amounts of CH4 and NH3 are present in the Jovian atmosphere, only emission from hydrogen and helium is observed. Most differences in the spectra can be understood in terms of the elemental ratios of the gas mixtures. Consequently, observations of the spectra of lightning on other planets should provide in situ estimates of the atmospheric and aerosol composition in the cloud layers in which lightning is occurring. In particular, the detection of inert gases such as helium should be possible and the relative abundance of these gases compared to major constituents might be determined.

Maps of Ertel potential vorticity on isentropic surfaces (IPV) and/or quasi-geostrophic potential vorticity (QGPV) are well established in dynamical meteorology as powerful sources of insight into dynamical processes involving ‘balanced’ flow. In the present study, we derive maps of zonal-mean IPV and QGPV in Jupiter's upper troposphere and lower stratosphere by making use of a combination of velocity measurements, derived from the tracking of cloud features in images from the Voyager 1 and 2 and Cassini missions, and thermal measurements from the Voyager 1 IRIS and Cassini CIRS instruments. IPV and QGPV are mapped and compared for the entire globe between latitudes ±55°. Profiles of zonally averaged PV show some evidence for a step-like pattern suggestive of local PV homogenization, separated by strong PV gradients in association with eastward jets, though on differing scales in the northern and southern hemispheres. The northward gradient of PV (IPV or QGPV) is found to change sign in several places in each hemisphere, even when baroclinic contributions are taken into account. The relationship of lateral gradients of IPV and QGPV with the corresponding mean zonal flows indicate that the northern hemisphere may be closer to marginal stability with respect to Arnol'd's second stability theorem than the southern hemisphere. Copyright © 2006 Royal Meteorological Society