National Geographic will have a story on the Cassini mission in its December 2006 issue and the editors of NG are hosting a poll on what story should be the cover story. Right now it is between the Cassini story, a story on the loss of Thracian gold, and a story on woodpeckers. The Cassini cover showcases the backlit Saturn mosaic taken last month. Right now the Cassini cover is losing to the Thracian cover 3,626 to 848 (the woodpecker cover is in a distant third).

here's the link: http://seabed.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/m...p;cover_index=2

Obviously I've voted for the Cassini image, and I must admit it ranks up there with some of MER's finest in my fav-image list...

BUT...

That image has one problem that I can percieve with the public : It doesn't look real. When I first saw it I actually thought "ahh - cool - a CGI version of what the eclipse imagery will look like". I can imagine the public might even reject it because of a similar confusion, you have to understand the image to appreciate it fully I think, and it some regards it's not an easy image to get ones head around.

Doug

Maybe you should have added some gaussian noise to the mosaic

If they actually HAD such a good photo of that thought-to-be extinct woodpecker (yes I have read about it) it certainly would have deserved the front page and been in line with National Geographic.
Now it is a stuffed one from a museum shown, also I preferred Saturn.

Obviously some space exploration friendly folks just woke up - it's now 3658 to 1177 in only 37 minutes or so. Just need another 5 or 6 hours of that pace and it will actually be a race.

Volcanopele,

I'm going to forward your message to the Cassini-Huygens mailing list, which I moderate. I'm sure we'll get a noticeable uptick in that number!




- John Sheff
Cambridge, MA

As of 14:45 CDT.

Gold Rush - 3683 votes
Saturn - 2007 votes
Woodpecker - 256 votes

Now at:
Saturn: 3100
Thracian Gold: 3688

Seems like a lot of Cassini fans did just wake up.

This is an easy choice. Its a fantastic image. ( and I just mentioned this at recent public talks). Although I agree that it can create some confusion in the mind of the general public

Saturn is swooping in fast

Now at

Saturn 3595

Thracian Gold: 3689

I have distributed this as an ACTION ALERT to Astronomy clubs and friends!

ken

Overtaken! Spammed this to all my online pals :-P

DON'T LET UP NOW!!! After nearly slamming the breaks on the gold rush (apparently there were a lot of people voting for it just because everyone else was) there has been within the last few minutes an upsurge for the gold, and they're piling up votes now faster than we are.

Vote count now 5001 to 3829. After that brief surge, it looks like the gold rush has stalled out again. Not a bad idea to keep encouraging Saturn votes where possible, though.

Must be a stampede of people voting, that page took forever to load.

I just voted for the Cassini image, and it's comfortably overtaken the gold image for the moment, 6254 to 3900. The woodpecker is out of the running with only 333 votes.

-the other Doug

p.s. -- actually, I'd be interested in seeing a cover based on the article "The Early Earth" that's also running in the upcoming issue. DVD

6608:3901:333.

The surge continues.

--Bill

awwww poor woodpecker.

Wow, all of this in just one day. Current votes:

7025:3903:334

And it seems to be going up by about 20 a minute or even more. Wow, good work!

In just 4 hours, Saturn has zoomed!


more than doubling its vote

its like a gravity assisted slingshot to infinity and BEYOND

ken

This is not an actual vote, FYI. They do this each month and compare it to the editors' pick. Once a year or so they publish in the magazine a little blurb on why one was chosen, even if readers did not agree. Hopefully the editor did pick the same one ;-)

As an example see the October choice:

http://seabed.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/m...sue_id=20060901

woo hoo 8000 for saturn

Don't you just love RECORDER.EXE...

Saturn 8300 - Thracian Gold 4154
May we already call that a knock-out?

I bet the woodpecker gets the cover in the end. lol

Uh oh, now we've done it. Just you watch, there'll be a concerted campaign now by woodpeckers to get their own back on the space program... Next shuttle that gets to the launch pad? That ET's going to be buried beneath woodpeckers hacking away at the foam...

I think we made the bulgarians mad, thracian gold is gaining: Saturn 15377 Gold 13691

AHHHHH!!! Thrace gold has overtaken Saturn - 16,010 to 15,716

Can't get the link to open... ...somebody must be bombarding the site with votes!

(Okay, so I hope it's Saturn fans...but I know nothing, noooothingggg...... )

Page down now. There was a battle for dominace, it seems the server lost.

How do you vote?

LOL, I don't think you can anymore I think they took it down because the voting was causing an unnecessary strain on their servers.

Yes I bet the woodpeckers hacked faster than what their server could manage.

I'm willing to bet that the cover will be a close-up of the magnificent but extremely endangered Patagonian Self-Igniting Flatulent Frog after this event... (Yes, unfortunately, that is the male's mating display...)

Did National Geographic ever cover Galileo at Jupiter?

"Did National Geographic ever cover Galileo at Jupiter?"

I believe it was in the September 1999 issue, the one with the Brietling Orbiter on the cover.

Thanks for that Info. A must get for me.

Just got my copy of the December 2006 issue of National Geographic in the mail, with backlit Saturn on the cover! A pretty good article, focusing on the rings, the Huygens landing at Titan, and Enceladus.

And here's the winning cover:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/features/feature20061128.cfm

Congratulations, all! Great job!

- John Sheff
Cambridge, MA