Halfway through its unprecedented ring-grazing orbits, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is capturing the most detailed images of Saturn’s rings ever taken.
The close-up photos show features within the rings that scientists have dubbed “straws” and “propellers,” composed of tiny ring particles and embedded moonlets.
Cassini initially imaged these structures when it first arrived at Saturn in 2004 but spent only a limited amount of time doing so because the spacecraft was speeding over the ring plane.
Those initial images provided scientists with their first views of the particles and moonlets embedded within the ring plane, but most were short exposures, and only the backlit side of the rings was photographed.
It took scientists another year of analyzing the initial photos to discover the “straws” and “propellers.”
In contrast, the current images resolve detail down to 0.3 miles (550 meters) and include views of both the rings’ backlit and sunlit sides.
To capture the highest level of detail, Cassini is making numerous passes over the area.
“As the person who planned those initial orbit insertion ring images–which remained our most detailed views of the rings for the past 13 years–I am taken aback by how vastly improved are the details in this new collection,” reported Carolyn Porco, leader of Cassini’s imaging team.
“How fitting it is that we should go out with the best views of Saturn’s rings we’ve ever collected.”
Cassini scientist Matthew Tiscareno of the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California, who planned out the series of new images, described Cassini’s plunge through the ring plane as ” the opening of an entirely new window onto Saturn’s rings…over the next few months, we look forward to even more exciting data as we train our cameras on other parts of the rings closer to the planet.”
The spacecraft will conclude its ring-grazing orbits in late April when it will dive between the rings and the giant planet for 22 final orbits. Scientists expect to be surprised by both data and images taken during this phase of the mission.
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Laurel Kornfeld
Staff Writer
Laurel Kornfeld is a freelance writer and amateur astronomer from Highland Park, NJ, who enjoys writing about astronomy and planetary science. She studied journalism at Douglass College, Rutgers University, and earned a Graduate Certificate of Science in astronomy from Swinburne University’s Astronomy Online program.
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