The varying temperatures of Saturn's rings are depicted here in this false-colour image from the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens spacecraft.
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Amazing new images from Cassini - http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2.cgi?path=../multimedia/images/rings/images/PIA06143.jpg&type=image
The Cassini spacecraft has found a new moon of Saturn in a gap between the planet's rings, and scientists say it is making ripples in the ring system.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4535709.stm
Amazing!.........
Saturn's vast and majestic ring system has its own atmosphere - separate from that of the planet itself, according to data from the Cassini spacecraft.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/4640641.stm
The Cassini spacecraft has identified a faint, previously unknown ring circling the giant planet Saturn.
It appears to be composed of material blasted off the surface of two saturnian moons by meteoroid impacts.
The moons Janus and Epimetheus may be too small to hold on to dust kicked out by these impacts, so it escapes into space, spreading out into a ring.
The tenuous, wispy ring coincides with the orbits of these two moons, mission scientists noted.
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/5368644.stm
The recent discovery of new rings around Saturn has prompted speculation that the Cassini mission will find previously unidentified moons orbiting the planet.
More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/10/12/moon_saturn/
Also: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/21/saturn_pics/
Scientists have made a significant step forward in understanding the dynamics of Saturn's magnificent and mysterious system of rings.
The behaviour of one ring in particular - the G ring - has baffled experts.
Its dust particles should ebb away because there are no nearby moons to hold them in place or replenish them.
But the Cassini probe has shed new light on the faint, narrow ring; showing that it interacts with a much more distant Saturnian satellite.
The work, published in Science, also unveiled the ring's odd structure.
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6927965.stm
Saturn's gauzy G-ring is being swept into its orbit, grain by grain, from a region of icy chunks on its inner edge. So say researchers working on data from NASA's Cassini spacecraft in the 2 August issue of the journal Science.
Most of Saturn's dusty rings are associated with a moon: for example, it is thought that the moon Enceladus' leaky bottom creates the E-ring; and the F-ring can trace its origins to the moons Prometheus and Pandora. But the G-ring doesn't have a moon, and its origin has been a mystery.
More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/08/03/saturn_gring/
Many years ago, a comet strike or a wandering asteroid passing through Saturn's moon system, crashed into one of the orbiting bodies, shattering it and sending fragments the size of sports stadia whirling along its orbital path.
New images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft have identified a series of "propellor-like" features that researchers think are the result of such a collision. The Cassini imaging team, including experts from the University of Boulder, Colorado, interprets the propellers as being the wake caused by small moonlets.
More: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/10/25/moonlets_a_ring/
Saturn's iconic rings may be much older than we thought, scientists say.
Data from the Cassini probe shows these thin bands of orbiting particles were probably there billions of years ago, and are likely to be very long-lived.
It means we are not in some special time - the giant planet has most likely always provided a stunning view.
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7141628.stm
A faint pinprick of moving light spotted by NASA's Cassini spacecraft in Saturn's G ring appears to be a moonlet that could be the main source of the ring, astronomers announced today.
Cassini scientists analyzing images acquired over the course of about 600 days found the tiny moonlet, which measures about a third of a mile (half a kilometer) across, embedded within a partial ring, or ring arc, previously found by Cassini in Saturn's tenuous G ring.
More: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090304-new-saturn-moon.html (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090304-new-saturn-moon.html)
Planetary scientists are keenly observing an equinox on Saturn on 11 August, in a bid to learn more about the gas giant's ring system.
A planet's equinox comes twice a year when the Sun crosses its equator, making day and night the same length.
It takes Saturn nearly 30 Earth years to orbit the Sun, so this is the first equinox since 1994.
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8194093.stm
Stunning new views of Saturn from a NASA spacecraft have revealed odd formations in the planet's trademark rings, including ripples as tall as the Rocky Mountains.
The new images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft show that Saturn's icy rings - once thought to be relatively thin - can be miles thick in some points and include weird, bright streaks from clouds kicked up by the cosmic clash between ring particles and interloping space debris.
"It's like putting on 3-D glasses and seeing the third dimension for the first time," said Bob Pappalardo, Cassini's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in a statement. "This is among the most important events Cassini has shown us."
More: http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090921-new-saturn-ring-images.html (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/090921-new-saturn-ring-images.html)
A colossal new ring has been identified around Saturn.
The dusty hoop lies some 13 million km (eight million miles) from the planet, about 50 times more distant than the other rings and in a different plane.
Scientists tell the journal Nature that the tenuous ring is probably made up of debris kicked off Saturn's moon Phoebe by small impacts.
They think this dust then migrates towards the planet where it is picked up by another Saturnian moon, Iapetus.
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8291905.stm
si
The rings of Saturn are the most intricate planetary decorations in our solar system, but are also cosmic gems festooned with unknown red material and some tricky dynamic forces that shape them.
The Cassini probe has been studying the gas giant Saturn since its arrival at the gas giant in June 2004. Over that time, Cassini has studied not only Saturn's awe-inspiring rings, but also its atmosphere, moons and the magnetic shield that surrounds it.
The discoveries that Cassini has made in its six years of close Saturn inspection, as well as the many mysteries of the planet left to solve, are detailed by mission scientists in two papers in the March 19 issue of the journal Science.
More: Rings (http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/saturn-rings-cassini-100318.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+spaceheadlines+(SPACE.com+Headline+Feed))
The spyware/adblocker discussion triggered by some of the stuff space.com serves up has gone over to the PC chatter section...
Bright Clumps in Saturn Ring Now Mysteriously Scarce
Compared to the age of the solar system -- about four-and-a-half billion years -- a couple of decades are next to nothing. Some planetary locales change little over many millions of years, so for scientists who study the planets, any object that evolves on such a short interval makes for a tempting target for study. And so it is with the ever-changing rings of Saturn.
Case in point: Saturn's narrow, chaotic and clumpy F ring. A recent NASA-funded study compared the F ring's appearance in six years of observations by the Cassini mission to its appearance during the Saturn flybys of NASA's Voyager mission, 30 years earlier. The study team found that, while the overall number of clumps in the F ring remained the same, the number of exceptionally bright clumps of material plummeted during that time. While the Voyagers saw two or three bright clumps in any given observation, Cassini spied only two of the features during a six-year period. What physical processes, they wondered, could cause only the brightest of these features to decline sharply?
More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2014-302
At Saturn, One of These Rings is not like the Others
When the sun set on Saturn's rings in August 2009, scientists on NASA's Cassini mission were watching closely. It was the equinox -- one of two times in the Saturnian year when the sun illuminates the planet's enormous ring system edge-on. The event provided an extraordinary opportunity for the orbiting Cassini spacecraft to observe short-lived changes in the rings that reveal details about their nature.
Like Earth, Saturn is tilted on its axis. Over the course of its 29-year-long orbit, the sun's rays move from north to south over the planet and its rings, and back again. The changing sunlight causes the temperature of the rings -- which are made of trillions of icy particles -- to vary from season to season. During equinox, which lasted only a few days, unusual shadows and wavy structures appeared and, as they sat in twilight for this brief period, the rings began to cool.
In a recent study published in the journal Icarus, a team of Cassini scientists reported that one section of the rings appears to have been running a slight fever during equinox. The higher-than-expected temperature provided a unique window into the interior structure of ring particles not usually available to scientists.
More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4709
Saturn's Rings: Less than Meets the Eye?
It seems intuitive that an opaque material should contain more stuff than a more translucent substance. For example, muddier water has more suspended particles of dirt in it than clearer water. Likewise, you might think that, in the rings of Saturn, more opaque areas contain a greater concentration of material than places where the rings seem more transparent.
But this intuition does not always apply, according to a recent study of the rings using data from NASA's Cassini mission. In their analysis, scientists found surprisingly little correlation between how dense a ring might appear to be -- in terms of its opacity and reflectiveness -- and the amount of material it contains.
More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4886
Cassini Makes First Ring-Grazing Plunge
NASA's Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft has made its first close dive past the outer edges of Saturn's rings since beginning its penultimate mission phase on Nov. 30.
Cassini crossed through the plane of Saturn's rings on Dec. 4 at 5:09 a.m. PST (8:09 a.m. EST) at a distance of approximately 57,000 miles (91,000 kilometers) above Saturn's cloud tops. This is the approximate location of a faint, dusty ring produced by the planet's small moons Janus and Epimetheus, and just 6,800 miles (11,000 kilometers) from the center of Saturn's F ring.
About an hour prior to the ring-plane crossing, the spacecraft performed a short burn of its main engine that lasted about six seconds. About 30 minutes later, as it approached the ring plane, Cassini closed its canopy-like engine cover as a protective measure.
More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6690
Close Views Show Saturn's Rings in Unprecedented Detail
Newly released images showcase the incredible closeness with which NASA's Cassini spacecraft, now in its "Ring-Grazing" orbits phase, is observing Saturn's dazzling rings of icy debris.
The views are some of the closest-ever images of the outer parts of the main rings, giving scientists an eagerly awaited opportunity to observe features with names like "straw" and "propellers." Although Cassini saw these features earlier in the mission, the spacecraft's current, special orbits are now providing opportunities to see them in greater detail. The new images resolve details as small as 0.3 miles (550 meters), which is on the scale of Earth's tallest buildings.
More: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6729
Cassini Mission Prepares for 'Grand Finale' at Saturn
NASA's Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn since 2004, is about to begin the final chapter of its remarkable story. On Wednesday, April 26, the spacecraft will make the first in a series of dives through the 1,500-mile-wide (2,400-kilometer) gap between Saturn and its rings as part of the mission's grand finale.
"No spacecraft has ever gone through the unique region that we'll attempt to boldly cross 22 times," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "What we learn from Cassini's daring final orbits will further our understanding of how giant planets, and planetary systems everywhere, form and evolve. This is truly discovery in action to the very end."
More: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=6803