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Saturn's equinoxes, when the Sun passes through the ring plane, are not evenly spaced. 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 ...
PSR J1748−2446ad is the fastest-spinning pulsar known, at 716 Hz (times per second), [2] or 42,960 revolutions per minute.This pulsar was discovered by Jason W. T. Hessels of McGill University on November 10, 2004, and confirmed on January 8, 2005.
In astronomy, the rotation period or spin period [1] of a celestial object (e.g., star, planet, moon, asteroid) has two definitions. The first one corresponds to the sidereal rotation period (or sidereal day ), i.e., the time that the object takes to complete a full rotation around its axis relative to the background stars ( inertial space ).
Cassini–Huygens (/ k ə ˈ s iː n i ˈ h ɔɪ ɡ ən z / 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.
[18] [19] [20] Initially, Saturn probably had a tilt closer to that of Jupiter (3.1°). The gradual depletion of the Kuiper belt would have decreased the precession rate of Neptune's orbit; eventually, the frequencies matched, and Saturn's axial precession was captured into a spin-orbit resonance, leading to an increase in Saturn's obliquity.
Saturn’s autumnal equinox is expected to occur on May 6, 2025. Spying Saturn’s spokes. The NASA Voyager 2 spacecraft captured the first evidence of the spokes in the 1980s.
Saturn is named after the Roman god of wealth and agriculture, who was the father of the god Jupiter.Its astronomical symbol has been traced back to the Greek Oxyrhynchus Papyri, where it can be seen to be a Greek kappa-rho ligature with a horizontal stroke, as an abbreviation for Κρονος (), the Greek name for the planet (). [35]
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 ...