Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Saturn takes about 10.7 hours (no one knows precisely) to rotate once on its axis—a Saturn “day”—and 29 Earth years to orbit the sun. Saturn is a gas giant and does not have a solid ...
Measuring ring-material detected by Cassini falling into Saturn’s equator allowed astronomers to give the rings another 100 million years to live. This story has been updated to fix a typo.
The sun passes south to north through the ring plane when Saturn's heliocentric longitude is 173.6 degrees (e.g. 11 August 2009), about the time Saturn crosses from Leo to Virgo. 15.7 years later Saturn's longitude reaches 353.6 degrees and the sun passes to the south side of the ring plane. On each orbit the Sun is north of the ring plane for ...
During planning for its extended missions, various future plans for Cassini were evaluated on the basis of scientific value, cost, and time. [3] [7] Some of the options examined included collision with Saturn atmosphere, an icy satellite, or rings; another was departure from Saturn orbit to Jupiter, Uranus, Neptune, or a centaur.
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
A study published in the journal Science suggests a hypothetical moon (called Chrysalis) came too close to Saturn's gravitational pull and was torn apart, forming the planet's iconic rings.
An artist's impression of Rhea's rings. The density of the particles is exaggerated greatly to aid visibility. [1] Rhea, the second-largest moon of Saturn, may have a tenuous ring system consisting of three narrow, relatively dense bands within a particulate disk. This would be the first discovery of rings around a moon.
Currently, Io, Europa, and Ganymede are in a 4:2:1 Laplace resonance with each other, with each inner moon completing two orbits for every orbit of the next moon out. In around 1.5 billion years, outward migration of these moons will trap the fourth and outermost moon, Callisto, into another 2:1 resonance with Ganymede. This 8:4:2:1 resonance ...