Saturn's Moon Enceladus: Cold, Bright Mosaic

The Cassini spacecraft has been studying Saturn and its moons since it entered orbit in 2004.

This image, taken on Oct. 5, 2008, is a stunning mosaic of the geologically active Enceladus after a Cassini flyby.

The Bright Shining Moon of Frankenstein's Mary Shelley

A Texas astronomer has used science to confirm one of the most famous tales in western literature, the "bright and shining moon" over Lake Geneva that inspired an 18-year-old Mary Shelley to write "Frankenstein; or the Modern Prometheus."

Shelley has long been doubted for her version of events that led to the writing of one of the most beloved Gothic tales in the English language: That she wrote it on a challenge one night in June 1816 during a "waking dream" as the moon shone through her window.

But Donald Olson, an astronomy professor at Texas State University in San Marcos, told Reuters on Monday that the night sky would argue that she was telling the truth.

"Some scholars are very skeptical, they even call her a liar," Olson said. "But we see no reason, either in the science or in the primary sources, to doubt Mary Shelley's account."

Olson has made a hobby out of using the sky to solve the mysteries of many of the world's most famous works of art and historical accounts.

His study of tides in the English Channel forced historians to change the accepted date of Julius Caesar's invasion of Britain in 55 BC, and he used astronomical tables to pinpoint where and when Vincent Van Gogh painted the famous painting alternately known as "Moonrise" and "Sunrise over Saint-Remy."

Shelley first wrote of how she came to write Frankenstein in the preface of the book's 1831 edition, and critics immediately began questioning her story as simply a ruse to sell more books.

The story goes like this: Shelley was staying with her future husband, Percy Shelley, at the Villa Diodati in Switzerland in June of 1816. Also present were Lord Byron and friends Claire Clairmont and John Polidori. Byron challenged all of them to try their hand at writing a ghost story.

WAKING DREAM
Shelley saw the "bright and shining moon" through her window that night and wrote the story while she was in what she called "a waking dream."

The closest account of Byron's challenge comes from Polidori's diary, in which he tells of the party gathering at the Villa Diodati for a philosophical discussion that ended "after the witching hour" of June 16, 1816. The next day he wrote that "the ghost-stores are begun by all but me."

But Olson said there was no record of the challenge itself from any sources other than Shelley's preface, and the assumption has always been made, though not proven, that the challenge and the writing took place early in the morning of June 16.

But he said that had never been confirmed until now.

"We verified when the moon would have shone on her window, which is when she first came up with the idea for the story we know as Frankenstein," Olson said.

The Villa Diodati still stands above Lake Geneva and the room where Shelley stayed is well known. Olson and his researchers made "extensive topographic measurements of the terrain" and investigated "weather records for June of 1816," described by Lord Byron and Polidori as unusually wet and rainy.

On that night, however, "we determined that a bright, gibbous moon would have cleared the hillside to shine right into Shelley's bedroom window just before 2 a.m. on June 16," Olson said.

He said that had there been no moonlight visible that morning, it would have indicated fabrication on her part.
"This indicates her famous "waking dream" that gave birth to Frankenstein's famous monster occurred between 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. on June 16," he said.

"Mary Shelley wrote about moonlight shining through her window, and now we have recreated that night," Olson said. "We see no reason to doubt her account, based on the astronomical data."

Olson's study appears in the October edition of "Sky and Telescope" magazine.

NASA WISE: Dark Reflections in the Southern Cross

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, captured this colorful image of the Reflection nebula IRAS 12116-6001.

This cloud of interstellar dust cannot be seen directly in visible light, but WISE's detectors observed the nebula at infrared wavelengths.

In images of reflection nebulae taken with visible light, clouds of dust reflect the light of nearby stars.

The dust is warmed to relatively cool temperatures by the starlight and glows with infrared light, which WISE can detect. Reflection nebulae are of interest to astronomers because they are often the sites of new star formation.

The bright blue star on the right side of the image is the variable star Epsilon Crucis. In the Bayer system of stellar nomenclature, stars are given names based on their relative brightness within a constellation.

The Greek alphabet is used to designate the star's apparent brightness compared to other stars in the same constellation. "Alpha" is the brightest star in the constellation, "beta" the second brightest, and so on. In this case, "epsilon" is the fifth letter of the Greek alphabet, so Epsilon Crucis is the fifth brightest star in the constellation Crux.

Crux is a well-known constellation that can be easily seen by observers in the Southern Hemisphere and from low northern latitudes. Also known as the Southern Cross, Crux is featured in many country's flags, including Australia, Brazil and New Zealand (although New Zealand's flag does not include Epsilon Crucis).

The colors used in this image represent specific wavelengths of infrared light. The blue color of Epsilon Crucis represents light emitted at 3.4 and 4.6 microns. The green-colored star seen beside Epsilon Crucis is emitting light at 12 microns.

This star is IRAS 12194-6007, a carbon star that is near the end of its lifecycle. Since the infrared wavelengths emitted by this star are longer than those from Epsilon Crucis, it is cooler.

The green and red colors seen in the reflection nebula represent 12- and 22-micron light coming from the nebula's dust grains warmed by nearby stars.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA

The Eerie Glow from M78 nebula in Orion Constellation

An eerie blue glow and ominous columns of dark dust highlight M78 and other bright reflection nebula in the constellation of Orion.

The dark filamentary dust not only absorbs light, but also reflects the light of several bright blue stars that formed recently in the nebula. Of the two reflection nebulas pictured above, the more famous nebula is M78, in the image centre, while NGC 2071 can be seen to its lower left.

The same type of scattering that colors the daytime sky further enhances the blue color. M78 is about five light-years across and visible through a small telescope.

M78 appears above only as it was 1600 years ago, however, because that is how long it takes light to go from there to here. M78 belongs to the larger Orion Molecular Cloud Complex that contains the Great Nebula in Orion and the Horsehead Nebula.

Discover the Cosmos with NASA APOD website