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The sun passes south to north through the ring plane when Saturn's heliocentric longitude is 173.6 degrees (e.g. 11 August 2009), about the time Saturn crosses from Leo to Virgo. 15.7 years later Saturn's longitude reaches 353.6 degrees and the sun passes to the south side of the ring plane.
During an eclipse of the Sun, the spacecraft turned to image Saturn and most of its visible ring system, as well as Earth and the Moon as distant pale dots. The spacecraft had twice taken similar photographs (in 2006 and 2012) in its previous nine years in orbit around the planet.
The planet's axis tilts away from the sun, which lights the bottom of its rings. But twice in its orbit, Saturn experiences an equinox, which—just like Earth—gives equal amount of light to ...
Mimas, also designated Saturn I, is the seventh-largest natural satellite of Saturn. With a mean diameter of 396.4 kilometres or 246.3 miles, Mimas is the smallest astronomical body known to be roughly rounded in shape due to its own gravity.
NASA released up-close images of Saturn's rings. ... See more on Saturn's rings: No telescope on this planet would ever have been able to see this. Cassini left Earth in 1997 and, in its nearly ...
Astronomers have long known about the perplexing spokes on Saturn’s rings, which look like apparitions skating along the rings and can be spotted in various locations depending on where the ...
One theory for why the resonance came to an end is that there was another moon around Saturn whose orbit destabilized about 100 million years ago, perturbing Saturn. [21] [22] The perihelion secular resonance between asteroids and Saturn (ν 6 = g − g 6) helps shape the asteroid belt (the subscript "6" identifies Saturn as the sixth planet ...
Well, every 13-15 years, Saturn, the second largest planet in the solar system behind Jupiter, is angled in a way in which the edge of its thin rings are oriented toward Earth – effectively ...