Categories: Saturn

Saturn’s Rings Have Gone Plaid

Saturn's plaid rings. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

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Are Saturn’s rings spinning at ludicrous speeds? It appears they have gone plaid! The Cassini spacecraft has actually spied two types of waves in Saturn’s A ring: a spiral density wave on the left of the image and a more pronounced spiral bending wave near the middle. And the “plaid” look comes from the slight pixelation visible near the brightest and darkest lines, which the Cassini team says is an unavoidable result of the size of the camera’s sensor and of image processing.

And if you don’t get the “plaid” reference, go watch Spaceballs.

The image was taken in visible green light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Jan. 11, 2010 at a distance of approximately 279,000 kilometers (173,000 miles) from Saturn.

Source: Cassini

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Nancy Atkinson

Nancy has been with Universe Today since 2004, and has published over 6,000 articles on space exploration, astronomy, science and technology. She is the author of two books: "Eight Years to the Moon: the History of the Apollo Missions," (2019) which shares the stories of 60 engineers and scientists who worked behind the scenes to make landing on the Moon possible; and "Incredible Stories from Space: A Behind-the-Scenes Look at the Missions Changing Our View of the Cosmos" (2016) tells the stories of those who work on NASA's robotic missions to explore the Solar System and beyond. Follow Nancy on Twitter at https://twitter.com/Nancy_A and and Instagram at and https://www.instagram.com/nancyatkinson_ut/