Rain is Falling from Saturn’s Rings

This artist's concept illustrates how charged water particles flow into the Saturnian atmosphere from the planet's rings, causing a reduction in atmospheric brightness. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute/University of Leicester

Astronomers have known for years there was water in Saturn’s upper atmosphere, but they weren’t sure exactly where it was coming from. New observations have found water is raining down on Saturn, and it is coming from the planet’s rings.

“Saturn is the first planet to show significant interaction between its atmosphere and ring system,” said James O’Donoghue, a postgraduate researcher at the University of Leicester and author of a new paper published in the journal Nature. “The main effect of ring rain is that it acts to ‘quench’ the ionosphere of Saturn, severely reducing the electron densities in regions in which it falls.”

Using the Keck Observatory, O’Donoghue and a team of researchers found charged water particles falling from the planet’s rings into Saturn’s atmosphere. They also found the extent of the ring-rain is far greater, and falls across larger areas of the planet, than previously thought. The work reveals the rain influences the composition and temperature structure of parts of Saturn’s upper atmosphere.

O’Donoghue said the ring’s effect on electron densities is important because it explains why, for many decades, observations have shown electron densities to be unusually low at some latitudes at Saturn.

“It turns out a major driver of Saturn’s ionospheric environment and climate across vast reaches of the planet are ring particles located 120,000 miles [200,000 kilometers] overhead,” said Kevin Baines, a co-author on the paper, from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “The ring particles affect which species of particles are in this part of the atmospheric temperature.”

In the early 1980s, images from NASA’s Voyager spacecraft showed two to three dark bands on Saturn and scientists theorized that water could have been showering down into those bands from the rings. Then astronomers using ESA’s Infrared Observatory discovered the presence of trace amounts of water in Saturn’s atmosphere back in 1997, but couldn’t really find an explanation for why it was there and how it got there.

Then in 2011 observations with the Herschel space observatory determined water ice from geysers on Enceladus formed a giant ring of water vapor around Saturn.

But the bands seen by Voyager were not seen again until 2011 as well, when the team observed the planet with Keck Observatory’s NIRSPEC, a near-infrared spectrograph that combines broad wavelength coverage with high spectral resolution, allowing the observers to clearly see subtle emissions from the bright parts of Saturn.

The ring rain’s effect occurs in Saturn’s ionosphere (Earth has a similar ionosphere), where charged particles are produced when the otherwise neutral atmosphere is exposed to a flow of energetic particles or solar radiation. When the scientists tracked the pattern of emissions of a particular hydrogen molecule consisting of three hydrogen atoms (rather than the usual two), they expected to see a uniform planet-wide infrared glow.

What they observed instead was a series of light and dark bands with a pattern mimicking the planet’s rings. Saturn’s magnetic field “maps” the water-rich rings and the water-free gaps between rings onto the planet’s atmosphere.

They surmised that charged water particles from the planet’s rings were being drawn towards the planet by Saturn’s magnetic field and neutralizing the glowing triatomic hydrogen ions. This leaves large “shadows” in what would otherwise be a planet-wide infrared glow. These shadows cover 30 to 43 percent of the planet’s upper atmosphere surface from around 25 to 55 degrees latitude. This is a significantly larger area than suggested by the Voyager images.

Both Earth and Jupiter have a very uniformly glowing equatorial region. Scientists expected this pattern at Saturn, too, but they instead saw dramatic differences at different latitudes.

“Where Jupiter is glowing evenly across its equatorial regions, Saturn has dark bands where the water is falling in, darkening the ionosphere,” said Tom Stallard, one of the paper’s co-authors at Leicester. “We’re now also trying to investigate these features with an instrument on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. If we’re successful, Cassini may allow us to view in more detail the way that water is removing ionized particles, such as any changes in the altitude or effects that come with the time of day.”

Sources: Keck Observatory
, Nature.

Outer Space – Mind Blowing Video from Jupiter and Saturn

Video Caption: This mesmerizing video unveils incredibly amazing sequences around Jupiter and Saturn from NASA’s Cassini and Voyager missions set to stirring music by “The Cinematic Orchestra -That Home (Instrumental)”. Credit: Sander van den Berg

Don’t hesitate 1 moment ! Look and listen to this mind blowing video of the Jupiter and Saturnian systems.

If you love the wonders of the hitherto unknown Universe unveiled before your eyes – and long to explore – feast your eyes on this short new video right now titled simply; “Outer Space”. Continue reading “Outer Space – Mind Blowing Video from Jupiter and Saturn”

Cassini’s Majestic Saturn Moon Quintet

A quintet of Saturn's moons come together in the Cassini spacecraft's field of view for this portrait. From left to right: Janus, Pandora, Enceladus, Mimas and Rhea. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

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Check out this gorgeous new portrait of a Saturnian moon quintet taken by Earths’ emissary – NASA’s Cassini Orbiter. The moons are majestically poised along a backdrop of Saturn’s rings, fit for an artist’s canvas.

Janus, Pandora, Enceladus, Mimas and Rhea are nearly lined up (from left to right) in this view acquired by Cassini at a distance of approximately 684,000 miles (1.1 million kilometers) from Rhea and 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers) from Enceladus.

The newly released image was taken by Cassini’s narrow angle camera on July 29, 2011. Image scale is about 4 miles (7 kilometers) per pixel on Rhea and 7 miles (11 kilometers) per pixel on Enceladus.

Cassini will stage a close flyby of Enceledus – Satarn’s geyser spewing moon – in about two weeks, swooping within 99 km

Moon Facts from JPL:
Janus (179 kilometers, or 111 miles across) is on the far left. Pandora (81 kilometers, or 50 miles across) orbits between the A ring and the thin F ring near the middle of the image. Brightly reflective Enceladus (504 kilometers, or 313 miles across) appears above the center of the image. Saturn’s second largest moon, Rhea (1,528 kilometers, or 949 miles across), is bisected by the right edge of the image. The smaller moon Mimas (396 kilometers, or 246 miles across) can be seen beyond Rhea also on the right side of the image.

This view looks toward the northern, sunlit side of the rings from just above the ring plane. Rhea is closest to Cassini here. The rings are beyond Rhea and Mimas. Enceladus is beyond the rings.

The simple graphic below shows dozens of Saturn’s moons – not to scale. So far 62 have been discovered and 53 have been officially named.

Saturn’s moons. Click on link below to learn more about each moon. Credit: NASA/JPL

Learn more about Saturn’s moons at this link

List of Saturn’s officially named moons:
Aegaeon, Aegir, Albiorix, Anthe, Atlas, Bebhionn, Bergelmir, Bestla, Calypso, Daphnis, Dione, Enceladus, Epimetheus, Erriapus, Farbauti, Fenrir, Fornjot, Greip, Hati, Helene, Hyperion, Hyrrokkin, Iapetus, Ijiraq, Janus, Jarnsaxa, Kari, Kiviuq, Loge, Methone, Mimas, Mundilfari, Narvi, Paaliaq, Pallene, Pan, Pandora, Phoebe, Polydeuces, Prometheus, Rhea, Siarnaq, Skadi, Skoll, Surtur, Suttung, Tarqeq, Tarvos, Telesto, Tethys, Thrym, Titan and Ymir.

Why Does Saturn Have Rings

Why Does Saturn Have Rings

Saturn has fascinated amateurs and professionals alike for centuries. As quickly as the planet’s ring system was discovered the popular question became ‘why does Saturn have rings?’ usually followed by ‘what are Saturn’s rings made of?’. Well, here are the answers to both questions.

The simplest answer as to why Saturn has rings and what they are made of is that the planet has accumulated a great deal of dust, particles, and ice at varying distances from its surface. These items are most likely trapped by gravity. The rings appear because of the wavelengths of light reflected by these rings of debris.

Some scientists speculate that Saturn may be too big. Its gravitational pull is so strong that it has been able to snatch debris from space. Some of which is as large as an entire building. That pull is why it has at least 62 moons. Those moons contribute dust to the rings as well as absorb dust from the rings.

A common theory as to how all of the material initially accumulated in Saturn’s rings is a series of asteroid impacts. Not with the planet, but with the moons around it. After the impact the remnants of the asteroids and the debris from the moons could not escape the gravitational pull of the planet.

One other theory holds that the rings of Saturn formed as other moons broke apart in ancient times. Additionally, this theory states that some of the material could be from earlier, during the formation of the solar system, and Saturn could not accrete the material while it was forming and it has been in orbit ever since.

No matter which theory you believe, the rings of Saturn are spectacular. After researching Saturn’s rings a little more, be sure to investigate the ring systems around Neptune, Uranus, and Jupiter. Each system is fainter than Saturn’s, but still interesting.

We have written many articles about Saturn for Universe Today. Here’s an article about the color of Saturn, and here are some pictures of Saturn.

If you’d like more info on Saturn, check out Hubblesite’s News Releases about Saturn. And here’s a link to the homepage of NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which is orbiting Saturn.

We’ve also recorded an episode of Astronomy Cast all about Saturn. Listen here, Episode 59: Saturn.

Reference:
NASA

Saturn’s Rings Formed from Large Moon’s Destruction

Raw image of Saturn's rings. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

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The formation of Saturn’s rings has been one of the classical if not eternal questions in astronomy. But one researcher has provided a provocative new theory to answer that question. Robin Canup from the Southwest Research Institute has uncovered evidence that the rings came from a large, Titan-sized moon that was destroyed as it spiraled into a young Saturn.

Over the years, different theories have evolved on how the rings formed around Saturn. The two leading theories involve a small moon that was shattered by meteor impacts, or the tidal disruption of a comet coming too close to Saturn.

But Saturn’s main rings are about 90% water ice by mass, and because bombardment of the rings by micrometeoroids increases their rock content over time, Canup said the rings’ current composition implies that they were essentially pure ice when they formed.

However, disruption of a small moon would generally lead to a mixed rock-ice ring, while tidal disruptions of comets would occur much more often at Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune than at Saturn.

New insights into the nature of Saturn’s rings are revealed in this panoramic mosaic of 15 images taken during the planet’s August 2009 equinox. Image credit: NASA/JPL/SSI

Additionally, neither of these theories would explain Saturn’s inner moons, which have low enough densities that they too must be comprised of nearly pure ice.

Canup’s new alternative theory is that Titan-sized moon with a rocky core and an icy mantle spiraled into Saturn early in solar system history. Tidal forces ripped off part of the icy mantle, distributing it into what would become the rings. But the rocky core was made of more durable material that held together until it hit Saturn’s surface. “The end result is a pure ice ring,” Canup said in an article in Nature.

Over time the ring spreads out and its mass decreases, and icy moons are created. Due to changes in the evolving Saturn system, these “spawned” moons then spiraled outward rather than inward. In this way, ice rings and ice-enhanced inner moons originate as a primordial byproduct of the same process that produces Saturn’s regular satellite system, making the whole process simpler than if there were several events.

Canup studies formation events with detailed computer simulations, including studying how our own Moon formed.

She presented her findings at the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Science meeting this week, in Pasadena, California, and her presentation was detailed in an article in Nature.

Sources: Canup’s abstract, Nature

Prometheus: the Michelangelo of Saturn

Saturn's moon Prometheus creates streamer channels in the planet's rings. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

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I’ve frequently said the Cassini spacecraft is an artist, so when Carolyn Porco, the mission’s imaging team lead, mentioned on Twitter that Saturn’s moon Prometheus is akin to Michelangelo, I had to take a look. Wow, this gorgeous image is suitable for framing! Visible in the perturbed, thin F ring, is the potato-shaped Prometheus, and having performed the perturbing, it continues in its orbit. Click the image for the super-huge version.

Prometheus (148 kilometers, 92 miles across) periodically creates streamer-channels in the F ring, and the moon’s handiwork can be seen as the dark channels. Here’s a movie made from Cassini images showing this process:

The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 1, 2010. A star is also visible through the rings near the center right of the image.

There are also some additional features in the F ring, courtesy of Prometheus.

This Cassini image shows icy particles in Saturn’s F ring clumping into giant snowballs as the moon Prometheus makes multiple swings by the ring. Scientists say that the gravitational pull of the moon sloshes ring material around, creating wake channels that trigger the formation of objects as large as 20 kilometers (12 miles) in diameter.

“Scientists have never seen objects actually form before,” said Carl Murray, a Cassini imaging team member based at Queen Mary, University of London. “We now have direct evidence of that process and the rowdy dance between the moons and bits of space debris.”

Read more about these fans and snowballs in this JPL article.

Source: CICLOPS

Mini Moons Are Buzzing Through Saturn’s Rings

Using images obtained by NASA's Cassini mission, astronomers followed several of what are likely to be dozens of small moons orbiting within the outer edge of Saturn's A ring -- the outermost of the planet's large, dense rings -- from 2005 to 2009.

Scientists for NASA’s Cassini mission noticed some weird-looking propeller-like shapes in the outer edge of Saturn’s A ring. What could be creating these unusual contours? A closer look revealed they were being formed by dozens of moving moonlets. Normally, these kilometer-sized moons would have been almost impossible to see, since they are embedded within the rings. “However, their presence is betrayed by the large tell-tale ‘propeller’ structures they generate in the ring material on either side of them,” said Carolyn Porco, leader of the Cassini imaging team, and co-author on a new paper on these propeller moons. In an email, Porco said similar features had been seen earlier in other locations in Saturn’s rings, but were “much smaller, harder to see, and so numerous that there was no hope of following any one of them. The new propellers, and the moonlets that create them, are some ten times larger and much easier to identify and follow from image to image and year to year.”

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The team said the ability to watch as the embedded moons’ orbits evolve over time could give scientists valuable new clues about how planets form and grow around stars in young solar systems.

“What is outstanding about these new findings is the insight they ultimately will provide into the early stages of solar system formation,” said Porco, “when growing planets become large enough to open gaps in the ring material around them and ultimately truncate their own growth.”

The scientists have tracked eleven of these moons since 2006. Most are between one and several kilometers in diameter, too small to be imaged directly by Cassini’s cameras, but are only distinguishable by the unique double-armed propeller features.

The area in the middle of Saturn’s outermost dense A ring is now known as the “propeller belts,” and the new moonlets have been given appropriate names.

“You may find it amusing that these large propellers have unofficially been named after famous aviators,” Porco said. “Those flight enthusiasts among you will recognize Bleriot, Earhart, Santos-Dumont, and others.”

Cassini caught sight of Blériot (named after a French aviator) more than 100 times, allowing the researchers to map its path in detail. The propeller shape it created is several thousand kilometers long, or half the distance across the continental United States.

“You would expect any object that’s just orbiting Saturn on its own should stay in a constant path,” said lead author Matthew Tiscareno from Cornell University. “What we actually see is that the orbits are changing.”

The most likely explanation, he said, is that the moons are actually interacting with the disk: exchanging angular momentum with the ring particles around them either through gravity or by direct collisions.

Still, other explanations, like resonant interactions with more distant moons, have not been ruled out as causes.

Scientists will be keeping an eye on these wandering little moons in order to figure out if the disk itself is driving the changes, similar to the interactions that occur in young solar systems. If it is, Tiscareno said, this would be the first time such a measurement has been made directly.

Read the team’s paper.

More images at CICLOPS

Sources: NASA, Cornell, Porco email

Cassini the Artist: Shadows, Ringshine, Double Crescent Moons

Cassini art. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

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I often ponder whether the Cassini spacecraft is a better scientist or artist. I found three recent images from Cassini that definitely give the nod to artist, but surely there’s lots of great science here as well. In this image, Saturn casts its shadow on the rings, but it also shows how the rings reflect sunlight onto the dark side of the planet. Here Saturn appears dimly illuminated by this ringshine. This view looks toward the southern, unilluminated side of the rings from about 10 degrees below the ringplane, and was taken on Jan. 2, 2010 when Cassini was about 2.3 million kilometers (1.4 million miles) from Saturn. Below: beautiful moons.

Two moons, with Saturn's rings. Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

While this image is stunningly gorgeous, perhaps the most amazing thing is that it was snapped by Cassini’s cameras just yesterday (March 15, 2010) and beamed back to Earth today! This is a raw, uncalibrated image and the only details posted about it is that the camera was pointing toward Tethys at approximately 2,410,546 kilometers away. Can anyone guess what the second moon is?

Double crescent moons. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute.

Another beauty, Dione and Titan make a smiling pair of crescent moons. This image was taken on March 12, 2010 and received on Earth March 13, 2010. The camera was pointing toward Dione at approximately 2,211,699 kilometers away.

For more great images see the Cassini website, or the CICLOPS website

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

Scientists Find Water Ice Creates the Spokes in Saturn’s B Ring

Spokes visible in Saturn's B ring. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

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The mysterious spokes that sometimes appear in Saturn’s largest ring, the B ring, have been unexplained. But new measurements from Cassini’s Visual Infrared Mapping spectrometer (VIMS) suggests the radial spokes that sometimes form across the ring are entirely composed of water ice. The existence of the spokes were unexpected and were first observed when the Voyager spacecraft flew by Saturn in 1980. When Cassini arrived at Saturn in 2004, the spokes were not visible, but later appeared in 2005; the VIMS instrument was not able to observe the spokes until 2008. Even with this new information, the spokes are still mysterious, as they appear to be a seasonal phenomenon and can become visible and then fade within a few hours. The process that creates and dissipates the spokes is unknown.

Another view from Cassini of spokes. Credit: Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

Early hypotheses on the spokes speculated that gravitational forces and/or electrostatic repulsion between ring particles played a role in creating the spokes. One clue was that the spokes are more commonly observed when Saturn’s rings are more nearly edge on to the Sun. Other scientists had suggested ice, but believed the spokes were composed mainly of smaller ice grains. However, the new data show a large portion of the grains are larger than expected; a micrometer or more in radius.

E. D’Aversa and his team from the Institute for Interplanetary Space Physics in Rome, Italy used the VIMS instrument on Cassini to observe the infrared spectrum emitted by these spokes on July 9, 2008. These were the first measurements of the complete reflectance spectrum of the spokes in a wide spectral range (0.35–0.51 ?m). The team said that radiative transfer modeling supports a pure water ice composition for the spoke’s grains, but their size distribution is found to be wider than previously thought.

The preliminary results showed a modal value of about 1.90 ?m (reff = 3.5 ?m, veff = 0.3) and a number density of about 0.01–0.1 grains/cm3. The researchers say the unexpected abundance of micron-sized grains in the spokes may have implications for the formation models since the energy requirement increases by at least one order of magnitude. Future observations could help constrain the size as well as shed more light on the how the spokes form, evolve and change.

Paper: The spectrum of a Saturn ring spoke from Cassini/VIMS