Lmhr
09-21-2006, 11:16 PM
By Jeanna Bryner
Staff Writer
posted: 20 September 2006
12:15 pm ET
Saturn showed off a new ring in a snapshot just taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.
The spacecraft, which entered the orbit of Saturn in July 2004, also revealed other dazzling features of the ringed planet, including wispy fingers of icy material stretching out tens of thousands of miles from the moon Enceladus.
Cassini’s cameras took advantage of a 12-hour backlight provided by the Sun, which was directly behind Saturn. So as Cassini lurked in the shadow of Saturn, the planet’s rings were brilliantly backlit by the passing Sun. Called a solar occultation, this Sun-Saturn alignment typically lasts only about an hour, but this time it was a half-day marathon.
The lengthy illumination of Saturn allowed Cassini to map the presence of microscopic particles that are not normally visible across the ring system. This level of detail gave astronomers the sharpest view yet of Saturn’s inner system, including the new ring.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060920_saturn_ring.html
Staff Writer
posted: 20 September 2006
12:15 pm ET
Saturn showed off a new ring in a snapshot just taken by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.
The spacecraft, which entered the orbit of Saturn in July 2004, also revealed other dazzling features of the ringed planet, including wispy fingers of icy material stretching out tens of thousands of miles from the moon Enceladus.
Cassini’s cameras took advantage of a 12-hour backlight provided by the Sun, which was directly behind Saturn. So as Cassini lurked in the shadow of Saturn, the planet’s rings were brilliantly backlit by the passing Sun. Called a solar occultation, this Sun-Saturn alignment typically lasts only about an hour, but this time it was a half-day marathon.
The lengthy illumination of Saturn allowed Cassini to map the presence of microscopic particles that are not normally visible across the ring system. This level of detail gave astronomers the sharpest view yet of Saturn’s inner system, including the new ring.
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/060920_saturn_ring.html