Friday, October 09, 2009
Mega-ring around Saturn
Image Credit: NASA/JPLIf you could see it, the new ring discovered around Saturn would stretch one full Moon's diameter either side of Saturn.
But you can't, it needed the orbiting Spitzer infrerad telescope to find this huge, but faint, ring around Saturn, which is probably due to dust kicked up from the moon Phoebe. Phoebe's dust also apparently explains the dark half of Iapetus.
The original paper was published in Nature (see Nature News). Further information at NASA, BBC News, ABC Science News. And for an awesome poem see the Digital Cuttlefish.
# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 7:09 am 
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
