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The second theory is that the rings were never part of a moon, but are instead left over from the original nebular material from which Saturn formed. [citation needed] A 2007 artist impression of the aggregates of icy particles that form the 'solid' portions of Saturn's rings. These elongated clumps are continually forming and dispersing.
Saturn and its rings are best seen when the planet is at, or near, opposition, the configuration of a planet when it is at an elongation of 180°, and thus appears opposite the Sun in the sky. A Saturnian opposition occurs every year—approximately every 378 days—and results in the planet appearing at its brightest.
2013 and 2017: hexagon color changes. Between 2012 and 2016, the hexagon changed from a mostly blue color to more of a golden color. [21] One theory for this is that sunlight is creating haze as the pole is exposed to sunlight due to the change in season. These changes were observed by the Cassini spacecraft. [21]
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured its first near-infrared observation of Saturn, highlighting details in the planet’s atmosphere and rings.
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 planet.
With a mean diameter of 396.4 kilometres or 246.3 miles, Mimas is the smallest astronomical body known to be roughly rounded in shape due to its own gravity. Mimas's low density, 1.15 g/cm 3 , indicates that it is composed mostly of water ice with only a small amount of rock, and study of Mimas's motion suggests that it may have a liquid ocean ...
See more on Saturn's rings: No telescope on this planet would ever have been able to see this. Cassini left Earth in 1997 and, in its nearly two decades of exploration, has sent home remarkable ...
Well, every 13-15 years, Saturn, the second largest planet in the solar system behind Jupiter, is angled in away in which the edge of its thin rings are oriented toward Earth – effectively ...