New ring discovered around Saturn |
New ring discovered around Saturn |
Oct 7 2009, 12:25 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1887 Joined: 20-November 04 From: Iowa Member No.: 110 |
QUOTE The newly discovered ring spans from 128 to 207 times the radius of Saturn – or farther – and is 2.4 million kilometres thick. It was found using NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, which revealed an infrared glow thought to come from sun-warmed dust in a tenuous ring. The discovery was announced on Tuesday at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society's Division of Planetary Sciences in Fajardo, Puerto Rico. "This is a unique planetary ring system, because it's the largest planetary ring in the solar system," team leader Anne Verbiscer of the University of Virginia in Charlottesville told the meeting. The source of the ring's material seems to be Saturn's far-flung moon Phoebe, which orbits the planet at an average distance of 215 times the radius of Saturn. When Phoebe is hit by wayward space rocks, the impacts could generate debris that fills the rings. http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn1792...und-saturn.html |
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Oct 7 2009, 04:18 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 363 Joined: 13-April 06 From: Malta Member No.: 741 |
Could it be that Phoebe is a captured burnt out comet!??
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Oct 7 2009, 02:33 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 509 Joined: 2-July 05 From: Calgary, Alberta Member No.: 426 |
Could it be that Phoebe is a captured burnt out comet!?? If I recall correctly, the general feeling is that it is most likely a captured Centaur (an object similar to 2060 Chiron), which somehow ended up in orbit around Saturn. Centaurs often end up turning into short-period comets, so it's possible that Phoebe *would* have ended up as a burnt-out comet if Saturn hadn't nabbed it first. But it could also have wound up getting thrown into the Sun, or right out of the solar system altogether, probably by Jupiter. (When you're a small Solar System body, messing with Jupiter is a *bad* idea. It never turns out well.) |
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Oct 7 2009, 05:33 PM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 2492 Joined: 15-January 05 From: center Italy Member No.: 150 |
This is the last present from cryo-Spitzer...
Interestingly, the ring coul be the source of Iapetus dark material! -------------------- I always think before posting! - Marco -
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