Space

7662 readers

16 users here now

News and findings about our cosmos.

Subcommunity of Science

This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

founded 3 years ago

MODERATORS

alyaza@beehaw.org

Gaywallet@beehaw.org

wintrparkgrl@beehaw.org

remington@beehaw.org

138

A Tiny Moon Creating Giant Waves in Saturn’s Rings (i.redd.it)

submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) by ooli3@sopuli.xyz to c/space@beehaw.org

13 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Daphnis, a small moon of Saturn, orbits within the Keeler Gap and exerts a noticeable gravitational pull on Saturn’s rings. This effect creates striking wave-like patterns along the ring edges, offering a visual glimpse into gravitational interactions in planetary systems.

Source: NASA : https://science.nasa.gov/saturn/moons/daphnis/

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] protist@mander.xyz 7 points 1 day ago

This image of shadows on the rings and others like it (see PIA11656 and PIA11655) are only possible around the time of Saturn's equinox which occurs every half-Saturn-year (equivalent to about 15 Earth years). The illumination geometry that accompanies equinox lowers the sun's angle to the ringplane and causes out-of-plane structures to cast long shadows across the rings.

Super cool to read about this. Thanks for sharing