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Cassini Image: Clumps in the F Ring



 
 
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Old March 17th 04, 11:40 PM
Ron
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Default Cassini Image: Clumps in the F Ring

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgibin/gs...jpg&type=image

Clumps in the F Ring
Cassini Project
March 12, 2004

Full-Res: PIA05382
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA05382

Scientists have only a rough idea of the lifetime of clumps in
Saturn's
rings - a mystery that Cassini may help answer.

The latest images taken by the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft show clumps
seemingly embedded within Saturn's narrow, outermost F ring. The
narrow
angle camera took the images on Feb. 23, 2004, from a distance of 62.9
million kilometers (39 million miles). The two images taken nearly two
hours
apart show these clumps as they revolve about the planet. The small
dot at
center right in the second image is one of Saturn's small moons,
Janus,
which is 181 kilometers, (112 miles) across.

Like all particles in Saturn's ring system, these clump features orbit
the
planet in the same direction in which the planet rotates. This
direction is
clockwise as seen from Cassini's southern vantage point below the ring
plane. Two clumps in particular, one of them extended, is visible in
the
upper part of the F ring in the image on the left, and in the lower
part of
the ring in the image on the right. Other knot-like irregularities in
the
ring's brightness are visible in the image on the right.

The core of the F ring is about 50 kilometers (31miles) wide, and from
Cassini's current distance, is not fully visible. The imaging team
enhanced
the contrast of the images and magnified them to aid visibility of the
F
ring and the clump features. The camera took the images with the green
filter, which is centered at 568 nanometers. The image scale is 377
kilometers (234 miles) per pixel.

NASA's two Voyager spacecraft that flew past Saturn in 1980 and 1981
were
the first to see these clumps. The Voyager data suggest that the
clumps
change very little and can be tracked as they orbit for 30 days or
more. No
clump survived from the time of the first Voyager flyby to the Voyager
2
flyby nine months later. Scientists are not certain of the cause of
these
features. Among the theories proposed are meteoroid bombardments and
inter-particle collisions in the F ring.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the
European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, a
division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena,
manages the
Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science,
Washington, D.C.
The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder,
Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit,
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page,
http://ciclops.org .

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
 




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