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Rings and ThingsCoincident with the 37th annual meeting of the Division of Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society held in Cambridge, England, imaging scientists announced today a collection of exciting results from the recently concluded first season of Cassini's prime viewing of Saturn's rings.
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Sep 5, 2005:
| The Clump/Moon Mystery - Scientists have long suspected that small moons hiding among the ring's strands might beproducing some of the unusual structure observed in the F ring. |
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Sep 5, 2005:
| Unidentified F Ring Objects - A solitary clump-like feature in Saturn’s F ring orbits past in this movie sequence made from Cassini images. |
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Sep 5, 2005:
| Shaping the Drapes - This movie sequence from Cassini shows dark drapes in the inner strands of the F ring caused by the gravitational influence of the shepherd moon Prometheus (102 kilometers, 63 miles across). |
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Sep 5, 2005:
| D Ring Revelations - This montage of images from the Cassini and Voyager missions shows that structural evolution has occurred in the tenuous D ring during the quarter century separating the two missions. |
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Sep 5, 2005:
| Arc in the Tenuous G Ring - This sequence of images shows a faint arc of material in Saturn’s G ring, a tenuous ring outside the main ring system. |
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Sep 5, 2005:
| The F Ring’s Spiral Arm - This map of Saturn's F ring illustrates how the ghostly strands flanking the core of this contorted ring, when examined in detail, actually form a spiral structure wound like a spring around the planet. |
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