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Translucent Rings
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Although solid-looking in many images, Saturn's rings are actually translucent. In this picture, we can glimpse the shadow of the rings on the planet through (and below) the A and C rings themselves, towards the lower right hand corner. For centuries people have studied Saturn's rings, but questions about the structure and composition of the rings remained a mystery for many years. It was only in 1857 when the physicist James Clerk Maxwell demonstrated that the rings must be composed of many small particles and not solid rings around the planet, and not until the 1970s that spectroscopic evidence definitively showed that the rings are composed mostly of water ice. This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 17 degrees above the ringplane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Aug. 12, 2014 using a spectral filter which preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 752 nanometers. The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 24 degrees. Image scale is 85 miles (136 kilometers) per pixel. |
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Alliance Member Comments
rochelimit (Dec 20, 2014 at 7:17 AM):
Dear Cassini team, first of all, sorry for my bad English. I have 4 questions about Saturn's ring:
1. How old is Saturn's ring? we know that it is formed probably 4 billion years ago, the same time as Saturn's formation, but the ring as we know now (the flat one), when does it formed?
2. Is Saturn's ring relatively stable (shepherd moons help stabilizing it?) or still actively changing and unpredictable?
3. Is it correct to say that Saturn's ring is the nebula for the formation of the Saturnian moons (Mimas, Enceladus)? Couple of months ago, a lump of thick material was observed in the edge of the ring. Where is that lump now? Is it still exist?
4. Among scientists and astronomers, which theory is the most favored about the ring formation? Is it from Saturn's nebula or from a destroyed Moon.
Many thanks for the beautiful updates!
1. How old is Saturn's ring? we know that it is formed probably 4 billion years ago, the same time as Saturn's formation, but the ring as we know now (the flat one), when does it formed?
2. Is Saturn's ring relatively stable (shepherd moons help stabilizing it?) or still actively changing and unpredictable?
3. Is it correct to say that Saturn's ring is the nebula for the formation of the Saturnian moons (Mimas, Enceladus)? Couple of months ago, a lump of thick material was observed in the edge of the ring. Where is that lump now? Is it still exist?
4. Among scientists and astronomers, which theory is the most favored about the ring formation? Is it from Saturn's nebula or from a destroyed Moon.
Many thanks for the beautiful updates!
NeKto (Dec 11, 2014 at 9:55 AM):
another image i like a lot.
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