Science
Related: About this forumJust when I thought pictures from Saturn couldn't get any better
Explanation: How old are Saturn's rings? No one is quite sure. One possibility is that the rings formed relatively recently in our Solar System's history, perhaps only about 100 million years ago when a moon-sized object broke up near Saturn. Evidence for a young ring age includes a basic stability analysis for rings, and the fact that the rings are so bright and relatively unaffected by numerous small dark meteor impacts. More recent evidence, however, raises the possibility that some of Saturn's rings may be billions of years old and so almost as old as Saturn itself. Inspection of images by the Saturn-orbiting Cassini spacecraft indicates that some of Saturn's ring particles temporarily bunch and collide, effectively recycling ring particles by bringing fresh bright ices to the surface. Seen here, Saturn's rings were imaged in their true colors by the robotic Cassini in late October. Icy bright Tethys, a moon of Saturn likely brightened by a sandblasting rain of ice from sister moon Enceladus, is visible in front of the darker rings.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120916.html
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)Surya Gayatri
(15,445 posts)jillan
(39,451 posts)deutsey
(20,166 posts)Seriously, I never tire of seeing new photos like these.
pokerfan
(27,677 posts)At first glance I thought it might be Mimas (nicknamed the Death Star) but Tethys also has a similarly large crater....
Tethys:
Huge, shallow crater Odysseus, with its uplifted central complex, the Scheria Montes, is at the top of this image.
Mimas:
Mimas with its large crater Herschel. Prominent bright-walled craters in this view include Ban just left of center near top, and Percivale (with several dark streaks) two thirds of the way left of Herschel.
When seen from certain angles, Mimas closely resembles the Death Star, a fictional space station known from the film Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope, which is said to be roughly 140 kilometres in diameter. This resemblance stems from the fact that Herschel can appear in Mimas's northern hemisphere, much like the concave disc of the Death Star's "superlaser".
deutsey
(20,166 posts)elbloggoZY27
(283 posts)The Universe especially our Galaxy is a grand place. We may never really know what events took place that created such great planets and moons. Exactly what dynamics took place that could not only give us the really huge Universe but the science had to be perfect in every detail or even we here on this planet called Earth would not exist.