Space

7644 readers

174 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

130

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

submitted 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours 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 6 points 13 hours 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