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The planet's orbital period is 29.5 years, so Saturn has nearly made one complete trip around the sun since the flybys of the two Voyager spacecraft in 1980 and 1981, allowing Cassini to closely match Voyager's viewing geometry. This movie shows the sunlit side of the rings at low solar phase, or spacecraft-rings-sun, angles.
The planet's orbital period is 29.5 years, so Saturn has nearly made one complete trip around the sun since the flybys of the two Voyager spacecraft in 1980 and 1981, allowing Cassini to closely match Voyager's viewing geometry. Each of these five movies shows the sunlit side of the rings at low solar phase, or spacecraft-rings-sun, angles.
A failed photopolarimeter prevented Voyager 1 from observing Saturn's rings at the planned resolution; nevertheless, images from the spacecraft provided unprecedented detail of the ring system and revealed the existence of the G ring. [28] Voyager 2 ' s closest approach occurred in August 1981 at a distance of 41,000 km (25,000 mi). [27]
NASA's Cassini spacecraft sent back images looking over the shoulder of Saturn's rings. See more on Saturn's rings: No telescope on this planet would ever have been able to see this.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured its first near-infrared observation of Saturn, highlighting details in the planet’s atmosphere and rings. Saturn’s rings shine in new Webb ...
Video caption: Seven Hubble Space Telescope images, each taken about four minutes apart, were stitched together to show “spoke” features rotating around Saturn. For more CNN news and ...
Fainter planetary rings can form as a result of meteoroid impacts with moons orbiting around the planet or, in the case of Saturn's E-ring, the ejecta of cryovolcanic material. [6] [7] Ring systems may form around centaurs when they are tidally disrupted in a close encounter (within 0.4 to 0.8 times the Roche limit) with a giant
On Monday, Aug. 2, Saturn will officially reach opposition, meaning that it will appear opposite of the sun from the perspective of the Earth. Saturn is at opposi See the rings of Saturn during ...