Saturn's Moonlet in Second life

Object Name: Saturn's Moonlet

• Title: "Saturn's ring may be caused by 'moonlet' " & "Bright 'star' near March full moon is Saturn"
  
• Creator: Dianna Padilla (Dianna Button)
  
• Date: March 6th 2009

• Summary: My work represents Saturn's new discovered moonlet! Saturn's outermost ring may spring from a newly-discovered "moonlet" only one-third of a mile wide. My project has six rings and a rotating moon around the planet.
  

• News Sources: http://blogs.usatoday.com/sciencefair/2009/03/saturns-ring-ma.html & :http://www.earthsky.org/radioshows/53009/bright-star-near-march-full-moon-is-saturn
  

• Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klpzpDWTY9w
  

• Interaction: My model depicts rotating Saturn in the middle. It has six rings to represent the fact that Saturn is the 6th planet outward from the sun and the most distant world that you can easily see with the unaided eye. "The moon's discovery and the disturbance of its trajectory by the neighboring moon Mimas highlight the close association between moons and rings that we see throughout the Saturn system," says Cassini imaging team scientist Carl Murray of Queen Mary University of London, in a statement. ; and thus my model.
  

• Motivation: Planets are being researched everyday. Searches for worlds similar to ours is the subject of many investigations out there. Also some time in March, Earth passes between the sun and Saturn. This means that the planet will be opposite of the sun in our sky. The full moon is also opposite the sun. So, Saturn is near the full moon and seen to the human eye as a really bright star :). What more motivation do I need than to reenact this into Second Life!

• Description: For Saturn I used an Orange texture to match the picture as much as I can. For the moon I used a blue coral texture since it created the illusion of a moonlike surface. Because the rings mesh well together I simply shaded them many different colors making sure that the last ring( the outermost ring) was clearly distinct. In order to hover text was challenging since the rotation of the planet and the moon was scripted about the prims' center. I had to make an invisible object that hovered text inside of Saturn.