Rings of Saturn
The rings of Saturn are the planetary rings around the planet Saturn, which can be seen with a small telescope. They consist of many small particles, ranging in size from microscopic to the size of a bus (or bigger) that form clumps that move around Saturn. The particles in the rings are made almost entirely of water ice,[1] with just a small amount of dust and other chemicals. There are some gaps in the rings. The moon Pan causes the gap called the "Encke gap" in Saturn's A ring.[2] The Cassini Division, discovered by Giovanni Domenico Cassini, is a gap between the A ring and the B ring. It is a product of orbital resonance.
Rings Of Saturn Media
The full set of rings, imaged on 19 July 2013, as Saturn eclipses the Sun from the vantage of the Cassini orbiter, which is 1.2 million kilometres (0.75 million miles) from Saturn. Earth appears as a dot at 7 o'clock, between the G and E rings – with its brightness artificially exaggerated in this photograph.
Detail of Galileo's drawing of Saturn in a letter to Belisario Vinta (1610)
Huygens' ring hypothesis in Systema Saturnium (1659)
Simulated image using color to present radio-occultation-derived particle size data. The attenuation of 0.94-, 3.6-, and 13-cm signals sent by Cassini through the rings to Earth shows abundance of particles of sizes similar to or larger than those wavelengths. Purple (B, inner A Ring) means few particles are
Saturn and its A, B and C rings in visible and (inset) infrared light. In the false-color IR view, greater water ice content and larger grain size lead to blue-green color, while greater non-ice content and smaller grain size yield a reddish hue.
Cassini space probe view of the unilluminated side of Saturn's rings (October 10, 2013).
A 2007 artist's impression of the aggregates of icy particles that form the portions of Saturn's rings which appear solid from a distance. These elongated clumps are continually forming and dispersing. The largest particles are a few meters across.
A Cassini image of the faint D Ring, with the inner C Ring below
View of the outer C Ring; the Maxwell Gap with the Maxwell Ringlet on its right side are above and right of center. The Bond Gap is above a broad light band towards the upper right; the Dawes Gap is within a dark band just below the upper right corner.
Saturn ring spokes PIA11144 secs15.5to23 20080926
References
- ↑ The Rings of Saturn (1995-11-21)Csep10.phys.utk.edu. Retrieved 2012-01-20.
- ↑ Cassini Solstice Mission: Pan (2004-07-01)Saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. Retrieved 2012-01-20.
