William Atkins
Wednesday, 07 October 2009 19:33
Science -
Space
Page 2 of 3
Some of the statistics of this new ring are described below.
They are:
• The newly discovered ring is an outer ring of Saturn. It starts about 3.7 million miles (six million kilometers) from Saturn.
• It has a width of about 7.4 million miles (12 million kilometers)—about 128 to 207 times the radius of Saturn.
• The Saturn moon Phoebe orbits the planet within this ring (and is probably the source of the material found within the ring—most likely micrometeroid impacts to Phoebe expelled material out into space and into the now formed ring).
• It has an orbital tilt of 27 degrees from the main ring plane.
• The new ring has a vertical height that is twenty times the diameter of Saturn (about one billion Earths could be string together to reach from one end to the other end.
• The ring contains only sparsely scattered materials, making it nearly invisible to observe. (However, Spitzer can “see” in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, so observed it even though it is invisible with regards to visible light.)
U.S. research scientist
Ann Verbiscer, a University of Virginia (Charlottesville) astronomer, is quoted within the NASA article. Dr. Verbiscer states,
“This is one supersized ring. If you could see the ring, it would span the width of two full moons' worth of sky, one on either side of Saturn."
Page two concludes with additional comments from Dr. Verbiscer.
