Something interesting in Saturns rings!

Found this just now.

I don't think it's an imaging artifact..
I think it's one of the Sheperd moons of the F-Ring..
Lit strongly, from the left, and oblong shaped..

But look how it appears to be perturbing and drawing a filament of material out of the ring.

Pretty cool eh?

The THING in the RING

I wonder if this will make the moon bigger over years and years of doing this. The rock crashing and sticking to the moon and then continuing for millions of years.

Also for the picture. Very cool looking.

I've cropped out a section, and brightened it up a bit..

Here it is close up.

Might be an asteroid captured by saturn's gravity acting as a new shepherd moon

Originally posted by Huria86
I wonder if this will make the moon bigger over years and years of doing this. The rock crashing and sticking to the moon and then continuing for millions of years.

I'm sure the dust is sticking to the moon.. Probably a coating of superfine powder.

BTW, I think this is the inner Shepherd moon "Prometheus"

Here is some basic info on Both of the known Shepherd moons.
Prometheus and Pandora

I thought I would update this thread.

Here is a nice description of what we might be seeing in the above photo.
Apparently Prometheus draws material out of the rings at regular intervals.
You can see a "swept clean" area, just up and to the right of the moon.


Prometheus Caught Stealing


"I still think I scooped the other science writers on this"