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Today's featured content

A quadruple transit of the moons of Saturn captured by Hubble Space Telescope.

Today's featured list: The moons of Saturn are numerous and diverse, ranging from tiny moonlets less than 1 kilometer (0.62 mi) across to the enormous Titan, which is larger than the planet Mercury. Saturn has sixty-two moons with confirmed orbits, fifty-three of which have names, and only thirteen of which have diameters larger than 50 kilometers (31 mi). Saturn has seven moons that are large enough to become spherical, and dense rings with complex orbital motions of their own.

Portrait of Elizabeth I

Today's featured topic: The BBC Sports Personality of the Year is an awards ceremony that takes place annually in December. Devised by Paul Fox in 1954, it originally consisted of one titular award. Several new awards have been introduced, and as of 2008, eight awards are presented, including the Team of the Year, Overseas Personality, Lifetime Achievement Award, Helen Rollason Award, the Coach Award, and the Newcomer Award.

Listen to
Spring, from The Four Seasons

Today's featured sound: The Four Seasons, a set of four violin concertos by Antonio Vivaldi. Composed in 1723,The Four Seasons is Vivaldi's best-known work, and is among the most popular pieces of Baroque music. The texture of each concerto is varied, each resembling its respective season. Performed by John Harrison and the Wichita State University Chamber Players.

Did you know...

Jex Blackmore during their performance art
Jex Blackmore during their performance art

In the news

Michel Patrick Boisvert in December 2023
Michel Patrick Boisvert

On this day...

May 2: National Day of Prayer in the United States (2024); Flag Day in Poland

Mireya Moscoso in 2012
Mireya Moscoso in 2012
More anniversaries:

Today's featured picture

A plan of the cities of London and Westminster, and borough of Southwark

A plan of the cities of London and Westminster, and borough of Southwark is a 1746 map of the City of London and surrounding area, surveyed by John Rocque and engraved by John Pine. Rocque combined two surveying techniques: he made a ground-level survey with a compass and a physical metal chain – the unit of length also being the chain. Compass bearings were taken of the lines measured. He also created a triangulation network over the entire area to be covered by taking readings from church towers and similar high places using a theodolite made by Jonathan Sisson (inventor of the telescopic-sighted theodolite) to measure the observed angle between two other prominent locations. The process was repeated from point to point. This image depicts all 24 sheets of Rocque's map.

John Rocque and John Pine

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