Every planet in our solar system is known for something. Mars is The Red Planet, Jupiter is the Giant Planet and Earth is The Planet with Twitter. I think everyone can agree that Saturn with it’s swirling surface and elegant disc of rings is The Stunning Planet. I’ve been looking at images of Saturn since I was a kid flipping through my copy of National Geographic Picture Atlas of Our Universe
NASA and the European Space Agency are running the going mission Cassini-Huygens using the Cassini Orbiter to study planets in our solar system. The images below of Saturns F-Ring were taken in the process of studying Saturn’s moon Prometheus. They show objects floating around the F-Ring and causing jets of material to shoot out of the ring.
The objects collide with the ring at low speeds of around two metres per second, resulting in ‘mini-jets’ that extend between 40 and 180 kilometres from the ring. In some cases the snowball impacts occur in groups, creating exotic patterns as they drag through the ring.
About Saturn’s F-Ring
Jupiter’s rings are the most extensive ring system of any planet in our solar system. They were first observed by Galileo in the year 1610 with his telescope. The F-Ring is the outermost ring and is the most active in the solar system. The gravity of the moon Prometheus, as you could see in the video above, affects the ice and dust in the ring. Usually, gravity is an invisible force, but the F-Ring is allows us to actually see it’s affects. Like the waves created by a boat in water, Prometheus kicks up gravitational wake and you can see it in the F-Ring.
-Mike
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