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Saturn Shows Off Its New Ring

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posted on Sep, 20 2006 @ 05:33 PM
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Saturn showed off a new ring in a snapshot just taken by
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft.

Cassini’s cameras took advantage of a 12-hour backlight
provided by the Sun, which was directly behind Saturn.
So as Cassini lurked in the shadow of Saturn, the planet’s
rings were brilliantly backlit by the passing Sun.
Called a solar occultation, this Sun-Saturn alignment typically
lasts only about an hour, but this time it was a half-day marathon.

The lengthy illumination of Saturn allowed Cassini to map the
presence of microscopic particles that are not normally visible
across the ring system.
This level of detail gave astronomers the sharpest view yet of
Saturn’s inner system, including the new ring.


SOURCE:
Space.com


Very cool discovery in my opinion.
Just shows that we hardly know all there is to know about our Solar
System, if one planet can have so manythings uknown about it until
the last few years.


Comments, Opinions?

[edit on 9/20/2006 by iori_komei]



posted on Sep, 20 2006 @ 09:49 PM
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Yeah, that is a pretty sexy ring.

As you said, just goes to show how little we know about our own local solar system, let alone the universe.

I wish Earth had rings.



posted on Sep, 20 2006 @ 09:55 PM
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I wish Earth had rings.


Well, if the Van Allen belts were visible, we would.

We have so many artificual satelites in orbit to, that in some
simulations, it looks like a ring.



posted on Sep, 22 2006 @ 12:04 AM
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as it becomes cheaper to get satellites into space maybe we will have our own ring!


Heres another link...

news.nationalgeographic.com...



posted on Sep, 22 2006 @ 12:30 AM
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Hey, I will only be interested in a Earth ring only when it blocks out light from the sun, sort of like a cloud...or an eclipse




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