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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.
An artist's impression of Rhea's rings. The density of the particles is exaggerated greatly to aid visibility. [1] Rhea, the second-largest moon of Saturn, may have a tenuous ring system consisting of three narrow, relatively dense bands within a particulate disk. This would be the first discovery of rings around a moon.
However, measurements of Saturn's rings suggest a much more diffuse core, with a mass equal to about 17 Earths and a radius equal to about 60% of Saturn's entire radius. [47] This is surrounded by a thicker, liquid metallic hydrogen layer, followed by a liquid layer of helium-saturated molecular hydrogen , which gradually transitions to a gas ...
Saturn has the most spectacular ring system, with seven rings and several gaps and divisions between them. Few missions have visited Saturn: Pioneer 11 and Voyagers 1 and 2 flew by, but Cassini ...
The Phoebe ring is one of the rings of Saturn. This ring is tilted 27 degrees from Saturn's equatorial plane (and the other rings). It extends from at least 128 to 207 [20] times the radius of Saturn; Phoebe orbits the planet at an average distance of 215 Saturn radii. The ring is about 40 times as thick as the diameter of the planet. [21]
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 two decades of exploration, has sent home remarkable ...
Saturn’s rings are seen as viewed by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which obtained the images that comprise this mosaic at a distance of approximately 450,000 miles from Saturn April 25, 2007.
Fainter planetary rings can form as a result of meteoroid impacts with moons orbiting around the planet or, in the case of Saturn's E-ring, the ejecta of cryovolcanic material. [6] [7] Ring systems may form around centaurs when they are tidally disrupted in a close encounter (within 0.4 to 0.8 times the Roche limit) with a giant