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The rings of Saturn are the most extensive and complex ring system of any planet in the Solar System. They consist of countless small particles, ranging in size from micrometers to meters, [1] that orbit around Saturn. The ring particles are made almost entirely of water ice, with a trace component of rocky material.
Saturn's hexagon. A partial view of Saturn's north pole, 2016. Saturn's hexagon is a persistent approximately hexagonal cloud pattern around the north pole of the planet Saturn, located at about 78°N. [1][2][3] The sides of the hexagon are about 14,500 km (9,000 mi) long, [4][5][6][7] which is about 2,000 km (1,200 mi) longer than the diameter ...
A ring system is a disc or torus orbiting an astronomical object that is composed of solid material such as gas, dust, meteoroids, planetoids or moonlets and stellar objects. Ring systems are best known as planetary rings, common components of satellite systems around giant planets such as of Saturn, or circumplanetary disks.
Cassini–Huygens (/ kəˈsiːniˈhɔɪɡənz / kə-SEE-nee HOY-gənz), commonly called Cassini, was a space-research mission by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to send a space probe to study the planet Saturn and its system, including its rings and natural satellites. The Flagship -class robotic ...
It is estimated that the A Ring contains 7,000–8,000 propellers larger than 0.8 km in size and millions larger than 0.25 km. [4] In April 2014, NASA scientists reported the possible consolidation of a new moon within the A Ring, implying that Saturn's present moons may have formed in a similar process in the past when Saturn's ring system was ...
Saturn's atmosphere exhibits a banded pattern similar to Jupiter's, but Saturn's bands are much fainter and are much wider near the equator. The nomenclature used to describe these bands is the same as on Jupiter. Saturn's finer cloud patterns were not observed until the flybys of the Voyager spacecraft during the 1980s.
Phoebe is roughly spherical and has a diameter of 213 ± 1.4 km[4] (132 mi), approximately one-sixteenth that of the Moon. It is Saturn's ninth-largest moon, but it is the eighth-most massive. Hyperion, another one of Saturn's moons, has a larger radius, but is less massive than Phoebe. Phoebe rotates every nine hours and 16 minutes, and ...
September 18, 2024 at 1:43 AM. Earth may briefly have had a ring system similar to Saturn ’s over 450 million years ago during a period of unusually intense meteorite bombardment, a new study ...