Sunday, December 31, 2006

An F-Ring Beauty for Year's End


A close-up of the F ring shows dark gores in its interior faint ringlets following the passage of Prometheus. Each gore represents a single interaction of the moon with the F ring material. The gores shear out over successive orbits, becoming the long, curving features seen here.

(Look here for a shot of Prometheus passing and pulling out streamers.)

The dark Keeler gap (42 kilometers, or 26 miles wide) is seen at right. The F ring core is similar in scale to the gap, at about 50 kilometers (30 miles) in width.

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1 Comments:

At 9:37 PM, December 31, 2006 Anonymous Anonymous had this to say...

Also notice how the narrow outer band of the A ring beyond (to the left of, in this view) the Keeler Gap is significantly brighter than the rest of the A ring. This difference is actually quite dramatic in all data sets. That part of the ring also seems to have significantly smaller particles than the rest of the A ring. Not sure why...

 

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