Discovery
Immediately after the discovery of Jupiter's decametric radio emissions in 1955, attempts were made to detect a similar emission from Saturn, but with inconclusive results. The first evidence that Saturn might have an internally generated magnetic field came in 1974, with the detection of weak radio emissions from the planet at the frequency of about 1 MHz.
These medium wave emissions were modulated with a period of about 10 h 30 min, which was close to Saturn's rotation period. Nevertheless, the evidence available in the 1970s was too inconclusive and some scientists thought that Saturn might lack a magnetic field altogether, while others even speculated that the planet could lie beyond the heliopause. The first definite detection of the saturnian magnetic field was made only on September 1, 1979, when it was passed through by the Pioneer 11 spacecraft, which measured its magnetic field strength directly.
Read more about this topic: Magnetosphere Of Saturn
Famous quotes containing the word discovery:
“As the mother of a son, I do not accept that alienation from me is necessary for his discovery of himself. As a woman, I will not cooperate in demeaning womanly things so that he can be proud to be a man. I like to think the women in my son’s future are counting on me.”
—Letty Cottin Pogrebin (20th century)
“The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We early arrive at the great discovery that there is one mind common to all individual men: that what is individual is less than what is universal ... that error, vice and disease have their seat in the superficial or individual nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)