Weird half - naut mi - sized objects have now been ensure punch through what may be Saturn ’s strange tintinnabulation , go away sparkling trails behind them . And research worker say these findings could shed light on the oddball behaviour of that ring .
The Saturnian ring in question is the planet’sF ring , the outmost discrete annulus of the major planet . The F ring is unco active , with features changing ona timescale as brusk as a few hour .
“ I think the F ring is Saturn ’s weirdest ring , ” said researcher Carl Murray at Queen Mary University of London .
scientist have know that Saturn ’s moon Prometheus and other relatively big objects can beget channels , ripples and snowballs in the F ring . However , it was uncertain what happened to these snowballs after they were created .
Now , usingthe Cassini probeto Saturn , Murray and his colleagues find these snowballs can snap through the F ring , result behind gleam trails the researchers are calling “ miniskirt - jets . ” Sometimes these snowballs move in mob , creating exotic - look miniskirt - jets resembling the barb of a harpoon . ( Here ’s aNASA video of a close - up view of a mini - jet . )
“ These findings show us that the F ring region is like a bustling zoo of object from a half - mile in size of it to moons like Prometheus a hundred naut mi in sizing , creating a outstanding show , ” Murray said . “ These latest Cassini resultant go to show how the F ring is even more active than we ever thought . ”
Murray ’s group chanced upon a tiny trail in an image from Jan. 30 , 2009 , and tracked it over eight hours . The footage confirm the snowball uprise in the F ringing . They next operate back through the Cassini image catalog to see if the phenomenon was frequent .
“ The F ring has a circumference of 550,000 miles , and these mini - jets are so tiny they took quite a bit of sentence and serendipity to observe , ” enjoin Nick Attree , a Cassini imaging associate at Queen Mary . “ We comb through 20,000 images and were delighted to recover 500 examples of these rogues during just the seven old age Cassini has been at Saturn . ”
These snows seemingly collide with the F ring at gentle speeding of about 4 miles per hr . These collision puff wink ice particles out of the F band with them , leaving a trail typically 20 to 110 miles long . The scientists give their findings April 24 at the European Geosciences Union meeting in Vienna , Austria .
These findings are not only an extra piece of the complex teaser that is the F gang , but they could serve throw light on dusty annulus in general , including the one around the Lord’s Day that Earth and the other planet were once born from , say Linda Spilker , Cassini project scientist based at NASA ’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory . “ We ca n’t wait to see what else Cassini will show us in Saturn ’s rings , ” she added .
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