NASA's Cassini spacecraft probing Saturn's systems has sent dazzling images of the planet's icy rings with new details that were totally unseen before. The images have amazingly captured the ring's exterior up close with higher prominence to features like straws and propellers.
Though Cassini had taken images of these features in the past as well, the current ring grazing phase of the spacecraft has added a new dimension to the details.
Cassini is now half way in its mission of 20 orbits in the penultimate mission at the tether edge of the main rings which it has been gazing since November. Until late April, the ring encounter will go on before it starts the "end game" to vanish.
Revealing Images
The grand details of the rings showed up the fascinating features of the rings wherein "straw" with its clumped-up ring particles and "propellers" are readily impressing. The latter is formed by the embedding of tiny moonlets.
Propeller takes its name for looking like a propeller. It may be known that some of the Saturnian moons have considerable influence in determining the shape of the planet's rings.
"As the person who planned those initial orbit-insertion ring images, I am taken aback by how vastly improved are the details in this new collection," said Carolyn Porco, who is the Cassini Imaging Team Lead and is attached to Colorado's Space Science Institute in Boulder.
What Do The Rings Carry?
The images indicate how the rings might be housing millions of orbiting "moonlets." On a scale of 550 meters, the images carry unseen features such as double-armed "propellers" pointing to a constellation of tiny moons hiding within the planetary rings.
In terms of makeup, the Saturnian rings are made of ice, dust, and rocks. Propellers are also deemed as gaps in the ring material stretching thousands of miles created by moonlets.
There are also grainy structures showing up in the individual rings, which are straws in which materials are transiently clumped for which astronomers are searching for answers.
One reason highlighted for the high-quality images with more details is Cassini aiming both the sunlit as well backlit part of the rings. In the past, Cassini's brief passes that lasted a few hours had returned images that were less conspicuous in details.
Now, Cassini is in the final months and making one fulsome weekly pass near the rings.
Matthew Tiscareno, a Cassini scientist noted the close views will open up more on the knowledge about Saturn's rings and exciting data will be coming in months as cameras will trail other parts of the rings closer to the planet.
Fruitful Mission
The images have reinforced the impression that Cassini, at the fag end of the mission that started in 2004, has been very successful. It has many discoveries to take credit of, prime among them are a global ocean of suspected hydrothermal activity in Enceladus and a liquid methane sea in Titan.
Cassini was conceived as a collaborative project of NASA, the Italian Space Agency and European Space Agency.
By September end, Cassini will wrap up its mission by plunging into Saturn's atmosphere for which the first "finale plunge" will begin on April 26.
