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Planetary News: Cassini-Huygens (2006)New Image: Moonlets Perturb Saturn's F RingOctober 19, 2006The Cassini spacecraft has revealed a never-before-seen level of detail in Saturn's F ring, including evidence for the perturbing effect of small moonlets orbiting in or close to the ring's bright core. Scientists speculate that there could be several small moons with a variety of sizes involved in the creation of structures like the one seen here.
For some time, scientists have suspected the presence of tiny moonlets that orbit Saturn in association with the clumpy and braided-looking ring. As the small satellites move close to the F ring core, they leave a gravitational signature. In some cases, they can draw out material in the form of a "streamer" -- a miniature version of the interaction Cassini has witnessed between Prometheus and the F ring material. The dynamics of this interaction are the same, but the scale is different. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on September 25, 2006 at a distance of approximately 255,000 kilometers (159,000 miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft angle of 29 degrees. Scale in the original image was 1 kilometer (0.6 mile) per pixel. The image has been magnified by a factor of two, and the contrast has been enhanced. More images and information can be found at the Cassini website and at the Cassini imaging team homepage. |
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