News about Saturn's Rings as seen from Cassini

[Whitters]

The varying temperatures of Saturn's rings are depicted here in this false-colour image from the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens spacecraft.

More at:
http://saturn.esa.int

[Mike]

Amazing new images from Cassini - http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2.cgi?path=../multimedia/images/rings/images/PIA06143.jpg&type=image

[Mike]

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

[Mike]

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

[Rick]

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

[Rick]

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/

[Rick]

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

[Rick]

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/

[Rick]

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/

[Rick]

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

[mickw]

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

[Rick]

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

[mickw]

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

[Simon E]

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

[mickw]

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