Wednesday, October 26, 2005

A Disturbance in the Force Ring



Top Men at NASA released an amazing image of Saturn's F ring today that clearly shows just how disturbed it is. Evidently Saturn's moon Prometheus has a rather eccentric orbit that brings it close enough to the ring (every 14.7 hours) to gravitationally attract bits of the ring. Creates a cool curtain effect.

In December 2009 Prometheus gets close enough to the F ring that it may actually plow through it. That'll be fun.

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