The material from Saturn's rings - ice and rocks ranging from the size of a grain of dust to flying mountains - surround the planet in a flat plane divided into several rings. In the F ring, these undulations move along the track, looking like moving bumps in the road
New images from Cassini have revealed ripples moving like waves in one of the rings and being stolen by the moon. These cellosols are seen in better detail than ever before and the theft by the moon has been photographed for the first time. Saturn's moon Prometheus is responsible for the phenomenon.
The material from Saturn's rings - ice and rocks ranging from the size of a grain of dust to flying mountains - surround the planet in a flat plane divided into several rings. In the F ring, these undulations move along the track, looking like moving bumps in the road.
The scientists previously estimated that the moon Prometheus creates these ripples by pulling material from the F ring and causing the rest of the material to move in a slightly different orbit.
This view was illustrated in an image where a pale band of material was seen moving from the F ring towards Prometheus through its gravity. The length of the potato-shaped natural satellite is 102 kilometers. This is not the first time Prometheus has stolen something. In Greek mythology, Prometheus is the one who stole fire from the gods and gave it to mortals. The curls in the F ring are seen in an animation of 44 images taken three minutes apart. The ring appears to oscillate during the sequence due to the movement of the spacecraft southward and away from the planet during the two-hour shoot. The photo was taken last Friday (December 3.12.2004, XNUMX).
