Close Views of Saturn's Rings

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Close Views Show Saturn's Rings in Unprecedented Detail

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This Cassini image features a density wave in Saturn's A ring (at left) that lies around 134,500 km from Saturn. Density waves are accumulations of particles at certain distances from the planet. This feature is filled with clumpy perturbations, which researchers informally refer to as "straw." The wave itself is created by the gravity of the moons Janus and Epimetheus, which share the same orbit around Saturn. Elsewhere, the scene is dominated by "wakes" from a recent pass of the ring moon Pan.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Full image and caption

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.

  Read More: NASA

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

A Resolution

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NASA's Cassini spacecraft zoomed in on Saturn's A ring, revealing narrow, detailed structures that get even finer as the cameras' resolution increases. Even at this level of detail, it is still not fine enough to resolve the individual particles that make up the ring.

High-resolution images like this help scientists map the fine structure of Saturn's rings. Features less than a half a mile (one kilometer) in size are resolvable here. But the particles in the A ring typically range in size from several meters across down to centimeters, making them still far too small to see individually here.

  Read More: NASA

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Checking in on Bleriot

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What appears as a pair of bright dashes at the center of this image is one of the features rings scientists have dubbed "propellers." This particular propeller, named Bleriot, marks the presence of a body that is much larger than the particles that surround it, yet too small to clear out a complete gap in the rings (like Pan and Daphnis) and become a moon in its own right. Although the moonlet at the core of the propeller is itself too small to see, the disturbances in the rings caused by its gravity betray its presence.

  Read More: NASA

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

'Earhart' Propeller in Saturn's A Ring

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The propeller informally named "Earhart" is seen in this view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft at much higher resolution than ever before. This view, obtained on March 22, 2017, is the second time Cassini has deliberately targeted an individual propeller for close-up viewing during its ring-grazing orbits, after its images of Santos-Dumont (PIA21433) a month earlier. The biggest known propeller, informally named "Bleriot," is slated for the third and final propeller close-up in April 2017. 

  Read More: NASA

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Plateaus Up Close

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Saturn’s C ring isn’t uniformly bright. Instead, about a dozen regions of the ring stand out as noticeably brighter than the rest of the ring, while about half a dozen regions are devoid of ring material. Scientists call the bright regions “plateaus” and the devoid regions “gaps.”

Scientists have determined that the plateaus are relatively bright because they have higher particle density and reflect more light, but researchers haven’t solved the trickier puzzle of how the plateaus are created and maintained.

  Read More: NASA

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

NASA Image Shows Earth Between the Rings of Saturn

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A new image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows planet Earth as a point of light between the icy rings of Saturn.

  Read More: NASA

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Bleriot Propeller Close-up

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This view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows Cassini's best image of the propeller feature known informally as Bleriot. The propeller is named after Louis Bleriot, the French engineer and aviator who in 1909 was the first person to fly across the English Channel.

This is the third and final propeller to be targeted for a close flyby observation during Cassini’s ring-grazing orbits (the period from Nov. 2016 to April 2017 when Cassini's orbit passed just outside the main rings).

  Read More: NASA

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Propeller Belts of Saturn

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This view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft is the sharpest ever taken of belts of the features called propellers in the middle part of Saturn's A ring.

The propellers are the small, bright features that look like double dashes, visible on both sides of the wave pattern that crosses the image diagonally from top to bottom.

  Read More: NASA

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Short Shadow

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The projection of Saturn's shadow on the rings grows shorter as Saturn’s season advances toward northern summer, thanks to the planet's permanent tilt as it orbits the sun. This will continue until Saturn's solstice in May 2017. At that point in time, the shadow will extend only as far as the innermost A ring, leaving the middle and outer A ring completely free of the planet's shadow.

  Read More: NASA

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Waving Goodbye

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Before Cassini entered its Grand Finale orbits, it acquired unprecedented views of the outer edges of the main ring system. For example, this close-up view of the Keeler Gap, which is near the outer edge of Saturn's main rings, shows in great detail just how much the moon Daphnis affects the edges of the gap.

This image was part of a mosaic that included Daphnis (PIA17212).

  Read More: NASA

 

[glorybebe]

So amazing to see the different layers of materials making up those rings.  Thanks for posting, Waspie!

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Grooves and Kinks in the Rings

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Many of the features seen in Saturn's rings are shaped by the planet's moons. This view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows two different effects of moons that cause waves in the A ring and kinks in the F ring.

The A ring, which takes up most of the image on the left side, displays waves caused by orbital resonances with moons that orbit beyond the rings. Kinks, clumps and other structures in the F ring (the small, narrow ring at right) can be caused by interactions between the ring particles and the moon Prometheus, which orbits just interior to the ring, as well as collisions between small objects within the ring itself.

  Read More: NASA

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Saturnian Dawn

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NASA's Cassini spacecraft peers toward a sliver of Saturn's sunlit atmosphere while the icy rings stretch across the foreground as a dark band.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 7 degrees below the ring plane. The image was taken in green light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on March 31, 2017.

  Read More: NASA

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Dawn’s Early Light

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The light of a new day on Saturn illuminates the planet’s wavy cloud patterns and the smooth arcs of the vast rings.

The light has traveled around 80 minutes since it left the sun's surface by the time it reaches Saturn. The illumination it provides is feeble; Earth gets 100 times the intensity since it's roughly ten times closer to the sun. Yet compared to the deep blackness of space, everything at Saturn still shines bright in the sunlight, be it direct or reflected.

  Read More: NASA

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Ring-Bow

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Although the rings lack the many colors of the rainbow, they arc across the sky of Saturn. From equatorial locations on the planet, they'd appear very thin since they would be seen edge-on. Closer to the poles, the rings would appear much wider;  in some locations (for parts of the Saturn's year), they would even block the sun for part of each day.

  Read More: NASA

 

Edited July 25, 2017 by Waspie_Dwarf
Image duplicated.

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Haze on the Horizon

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This false-color view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft gazes toward the rings beyond Saturn's sunlit horizon. Along the limb (the planet's edge) at left can be seen a thin, detached haze. This haze vanishes toward the right side of the scene.

Cassini will pass through Saturn's upper atmosphere during the final five orbits of the mission, before making a fateful plunge into Saturn on Sept. 15, 2017. The region through which the spacecraft will fly on those last orbits is well above the haze seen here, which is in Saturn's stratosphere. In fact, even when Cassini plunges toward Saturn to meet its fate, contact with the spacecraft is expected to be lost before it reaches the depth of this haze.

  Read More: NASA

 

[The Silver Thong]

Now that is cool. Almost looks like an old record, well I guess it kind of is. 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Prometheus and the Ghostly F Ring

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The thin sliver of Saturn's moon Prometheus lurks near ghostly structures in Saturn's narrow F ring in this view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Many of the narrow ring's faint and wispy features result from its gravitational interactions with Prometheus (86 kilometers, or 53 miles across).

Most of the small moon's surface is in darkness due to the viewing geometry here. Cassini was positioned behind Saturn and Prometheus with respect to the sun, looking toward the moon's dark side and just a bit of the moon’s sunlit northern hemisphere.

  Read More: NASA

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Saturn-lit Tethys

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Cassini gazes across the icy rings of Saturn toward the icy moon Tethys, whose night side is illuminated by Saturnshine, or sunlight reflected by the planet.

Tethys was on the far side of Saturn with respect to Cassini here; an observer looking upward from the moon's surface toward Cassini would see Saturn's illuminated disk filling the sky. 

  Read More: NASA

 

[Derek Willis]

This was the first drawing of Saturn, made by Galileo in 1616, almost exactly four hundred years ago. Imagine what the coming four hundred years will be like ... 

 

 

[Waspie_Dwarf]

On 8/26/2017 at 11:05 PM, Derek Willis said:

 Imagine what the coming four hundred years will be like ...

In 400 years I would hope we have images matching those of Cassini of planets around other stars.

[Derek Willis]

1 hour ago, Waspie_Dwarf said:

In 400 years I would hope we have images matching those of Cassini of planets around other stars.

I would say that is a realistic hope. Very roughly, what we now "see" of stars is comparable to what Galileo saw of the planets when he first looked at them. For instance, he discovered the moons around Jupiter, and we now know many stars have planets. Within a few decades of Galileo, Huygens and Cassini had identified surface features on Mars and Jupiter. We are now getting an inferred inkling of what the surface of Antares is like. Perhaps by the end of this century we will have a cluster of space telescopes forming an interferometer many millions of miles wide. That would allow us to see stars with some clarity, and glimpse their planets. After that, who knows what we will be able to do!

[Waspie_Dwarf]

Staggering Structure

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This view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft shows a wave structure in Saturn's rings known as the Janus 2:1 spiral density wave. Resulting from the same process that creates spiral galaxies, spiral density waves in Saturn’s rings are much more tightly wound. In this case, every second wave crest is actually the same spiral arm which has encircled the entire planet multiple times.

This is the only major density wave visible in Saturn's B ring. Most of the B ring is characterized by structures that dominate the areas where density waves might otherwise occur, but this innermost portion of the B ring is different.

  Read More: NASA

 

[taniwha]

On 30/07/2017 at 5:23 AM, The Silver Thong said:

Now that is cool. Almost looks like an old record, well I guess it kind of is. 

Great minds think alike! 

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After centuries of looking with awe and wonder at the beauty of Saturn and its rings, we can now listen to them, thanks to the efforts of astrophysicists at the University of Toronto...

https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/phys.org/news/2017-08-astrophysicists-moons-saturn-music.amp

[taniwha]

On 27/08/2017 at 10:05 AM, Derek Willis said:

This was the first drawing of Saturn, made by Galileo in 1616, almost exactly four hundred years ago. Imagine what the coming four hundred years will be like ... 

 

 

Actually his first drawing was in 1610 and was slightly different as no ring feature was resolved. 

http://solarviews.com/eng/saturnbg.htm

Interestingly the first photograph of Saturn is credited to Commons in 1883.