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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.
Pan is the innermost named moon of Saturn. [4] It is approximately 35 kilometres across and 23 km wide and orbits within the Encke Gap in Saturn's A Ring.Pan is a ring shepherd and is responsible for keeping the Encke Gap free of ring particles.
The moon was named in 2006 after Daphnis, a shepherd, pipes player, and pastoral poet in Greek mythology; [8] he was descendant of the Titans, after whom the largest moons of Saturn are named. Both Daphnis and Pan, the only other known shepherd moon to orbit within Saturn's main rings, are named for mythological figures associated with shepherds.
The moons Prometheus (right) and Pandora (left) orbit just inside and outside, respectively, the F ring of Saturn, but only Prometheus is thought to function as a shepherd moon. 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 ...
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. The potential discovery was announced in the journal Science on March 6, 2008. [2]
Saturn's rings might have formed 100 million years ago when one of its icy moons was ripped apart by the planet's gravity. ... For premium support please call: 800-290-4726 more ways to reach us.
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 ...
Scientists studying Saturn's rings are hoping to get a ... Murray believes Peggy is a moon forming within the planet's rings, though researchers have yet to receive a direct image of Peggy's form ...