![]() ![]() ![]() (But while they resemble propellers, they don’t actually rotate.) “It’s like water is moving in two different directions around the moonlet,” said Linda Spilker, project scientist for the Cassini mission. The ring particles nearer Saturn move faster than the moonlet while those farther from Saturn move slower than the moonlet, and the interaction is gravitational, causing wake to form both behind and in front of the moonlet as it orbits. The ring particles are kicked up in the same way that a moving boat creates wake. The moonlets launch the surrounding ring particles hundreds of feet (meters) above and below the ring, producing the features Cassini imaged. The propellers are produced by the gravitational influence of moonlets, lumps of ring material that are estimated to be half a mile (around 1 kilometer) in diameter, which is smaller than a moon but larger than individual ring particles. The spacecraft’s instruments first observed the formations in 2006. The spacecraft also observed that most of Saturn’s inner moons orbit within rings (some partial and some complete) made of particles blasted off the moons’ own surfaces by micrometeoroid impacts.Ĭassini also discovered features that look like propellers, which are sometimes several thousand miles (kilometers) long. ![]() Cassini watched some of Saturn’s moons steal ring particles, and other moons contribute particles to the rings.Ĭassini found that much of the material for Saturn's E-ring-a diffuse ring outside the bright, main rings-comes from the moon Enceladus, which is venting icy particles and gas into space as it orbits Saturn. To better understand the size and distribution of ring particles, as well as what they’re made of, Cassini studied how the light of distant stars changes when passing through the rings, and how our own star’s light reflects off of them. Few sights in the solar system are more strikingly beautiful than softly hued Saturn embraced by the shadows of its stately rings. ![]()
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