Saturn’s unusual rings have fascinated scientists for years – and now a widely-held belief has been proved largely wrong.
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The ring’s mass was discovered using Cassini’s visible and infrared mapping spectrometer, which observed fine-scale ring features known as spiral density waves by analyzing the light from a number of bright, distant stars as it passed through Saturn’s B ring. The brighter opaque rings, astronomers assumed, contained more matter, and were heavier.
In order to understand how baffling this new development is, Phil Nicholson, a scientist from the Cornell University working with the space probe, made a little analogy. A clear pool seems far less opaque than a misty meadow, but the pool is far denser and has a lot more water than the meadow. Next year, Cassini will finish its Saturn mission, allowing astronomers a chance to narrow down the ring’s mass. In 2017, astronomers will take the difference between the two measurements to confirm the mass of the rings.
Despite speculating that it might have something to do with the sizes and densities of the individual particles, the researchers are unsure of how different regions with the same amount of material can have different opacities.
Hedman added that this is particularly astonishing because the B ring can be up to 10 times more opaque as compared to the A ring, and the overall mass of the B ring was lowered than initially thought. Astronomers used density waves, ripples that form like a traffic jam as ring particles get jostled by Saturn’s moons.
They have found that an optical illusion has misled astronomers about the real size of Saturn’s most opaque ring. A less dense ring would evolve faster than a ring that contains more material.
As a ring develops, it accrues a significant amount of dust from meteorites and other sources, which acts to darken the ring and increase its mass. Therefore, since Saturn’s B ring has a lower-than-expected mass, it is possible that it is much younger than had previously been believed. “The rings are so magnificent and awe-inspiring, it’s impossible for us to resist the mystery of how they came to be”.
“By “weighing” the core of the B ring for the first time, this study makes a meaningful step in our quest to piece together the age and origin of Saturn’s rings”, said Linda Spilker from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California.
Some sections of the B ring are more opaque than others. She studied journalism at Douglass College, Rutgers University, and earned a Graduate Certificate of Science in astronomy from Swinburne University’s Astronomy Online program. Since we already know the total mass of the system, the resulting amount will tell us exactly how big the ring system is. This new analysis is the first to directly measure the density of mass in the ring, according to NASA. He speculated that it might be linked to the density or size of individual particles. In fact, while packing less material Saturn’s B ring is less dense than it was ever believed.
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Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the farthest that can be seen by the human eye.
