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NASA Discovers Giant Ring Around Saturn

Posted by Soulskill on from the headlines-that-aren't-as-stupid-as-they-sound dept.

caffiend666 writes with news that scientists using the Spitzer Space Telescope have discovered a very large, previously unknown ring around the planet Saturn. According to NASA, if the ring were visible to the naked eye from Earth, it would cover a patch of sky roughly twice the angular diameter of the Moon. "The new belt lies at the far reaches of the Saturnian system, with an orbit tilted 27 degrees from the main ring plane. The bulk of its material starts about six million kilometers away from the planet and extends outward roughly another 12 million kilometers. One of Saturn's farthest moons, Phoebe, circles within the newfound ring, and is likely the source of its material. Saturn's newest halo is thick, too — its vertical height is about 20 times the diameter of the planet. It would take about one billion Earths stacked together to fill the ring. ... The ring itself is tenuous, made up of a thin array of ice and dust particles. Spitzer's infrared eyes were able to spot the glow of the band's cool dust. The telescope, launched in 2003, is currently 107 million kilometers from Earth in orbit around the sun."

23 of 255 comments (clear)

  1. Good thing... by BeneathTheVeil · · Score: 4, Funny

    ...it wasn't a giant ring around Uranus.

    Yeah, yeah, just thought I'd get that out of the way early.

    1. Re:Good thing... by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Until 2620, when astronomers change its name to Urectum, we're still stuck with that stupid joke.

      --
      SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    2. Re:Good thing... by snspdaarf · · Score: 3, Funny

      "Those dirty rings. You try scrubbing, soaking, and tilting them 27 degrees, and someone still pipes up with 'Ring Around Uranus!' "

      --
      Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
  2. Missed by Voyager? by IflyRC · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm not sure I understand why something so large was missed by Voyager. I understand the difficulty of viewing something like this from Earth but those probes were right there.

    1. Re:Missed by Voyager? by irussel · · Score: 5, Informative

      Did you even read the articles?

      quote:
      JPL spokeswoman Whitney Clavin said the ring is very diffuse and doesn't reflect much visible light but the infrared Spitzer telescope was able to detect it.

      "The particles are so far apart that if you were to stand in the ring, you wouldn't even know it," said Verbiscer.

    2. Re:Missed by Voyager? by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It's a very faint ring, more like a thin cloud. Voyager was generally not designed to study something that thin, unless perhaps they knew specifically what to look for, such as a specific wavelength. Plus, when you are "in" it, it's hard to have something to compare to know that there's a difference. You cannot rule out instrument contamination or noise when it's almost equal in all directions.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    3. Re:Missed by Voyager? by Rich0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      As others have pointed out, the issue was with luminosity, not being too small to see.

      In fact, these rings are SO big that being close probably makes them even harder to see.

      Consider that we know exactly what the shape of the Andromeda galaxy is, but we only have a general knowledge of the shape of our own galaxy. Or, consider that a person in a hedge maze might need an hour or two to accurately map it, but somebody flying overhead would just have to snap a photo.

      On the topic of Andromeda - that galaxy is actually similar to the size of the moon in the sky (maybe bigger). However, it is too dim to see with the naked eye (maybe just a splotch in a very dark sky). A simple camera can get a decent shot of it given a long enough exposure time.

    4. Re:Missed by Voyager? by buchner.johannes · · Score: 4, Interesting

      It is astonishing how little we know about the non-radiating matter in our own solar system. For example, the size of the Oort cloud is not really known.
      We can see active galactic nuclei up to z=6.4 or 5.4 Gpc, but don't know the objects within 0.04 parsecs of earth yet.
      The sphere is a beast.

      --
      NB: The message above might reflect my opinion right now, but not necessarily tomorrow or next year.
    5. Re:Missed by Voyager? by LateArthurDent · · Score: 4, Informative

      Personally, I'd be more preoccupied with trying to breathe and not instantly freeze to death.

      You wouldn't really instantly freeze, that's a misconception. Without being in direct contact with something, like an atmosphere, there's no heat transfer via conduction or convection. In a vacuum you only lose heat via radiation, and you know that's pretty slow, since Vacuum flasks can keep things hot for a really long time.

      So yeah, breathing would be your concern.

    6. Re:Missed by Voyager? by Sheafification · · Score: 4, Informative

      Losing heat by radiation is only slow when there's lots of stuff around you radiating back. According to this humans lose between 50% and 60% of their heat from radiation. When you are floating exposed in space NONE of that heat comes back. It's not instant freezing, but it's not exactly slow either.

  3. Re:Whats funny is my initial reaction to the headl by Chris+Mattern · · Score: 4, Insightful

    A better headline would've been, "NASA Discovers Previously Unknown Ring Around Saturn"

  4. Esoteric Naming System by stressclq · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Couldn't help myself, from TFA (emphasis added):

    Before the discovery Saturn was known to have seven main rings named A through E and several faint unnamed rings.

    What kind of a messed up numeral system do they use in NASA?

    Joking aside, the ring divisions are labelled (from the closest to furthest) : D, C, B, A then F, G and finally E as the outermost ring.

    Wonder what they will name this one, anyone good with sequence puzzles?

    1. Re:Esoteric Naming System by Qzukk · · Score: 4, Funny

      Wonder what they will name this one, anyone good with sequence puzzles?

      D#

      --
      If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
    2. Re:Esoteric Naming System by erroneus · · Score: 3, Funny

      Yes, because the preparation for "H" feels good on the whole...

    3. Re:Esoteric Naming System by cwiegmann24 · · Score: 4, Informative

      I wonder if they were named in sequence (A, B, C ... ) as they were discovered, not as they lie from closest to farthest. I could understand as equipment got better, NASA was able to send spacecraft closer, etc., more rings would be identified.

  5. Cool Dust by Nerdfest · · Score: 4, Funny

    Cool Dust? Wow, I could have used some of that in high school. This is undoubtedly part of some astronomy group's secret project to get back at the jocks.

  6. Iapetus? by pz · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Is this ring the source of the dark material on Iapetus?

    (Looking at the images of Iapetus, my instant reaction was that it looked exactly like objects that I've spray-painted at an oblique angle -- and by analogy the dark surface MUST be accreted material from a dust cloud.)

    --

    Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
    1. Re:Iapetus? by agentgonzo · · Score: 5, Informative

      Yes. The BBC article states that this ring is the cause of the dark matter on Iapetus. Iapetus is tidally locked to Saturn, so will always present the same side to the direction of motion in its orbit. This side is the darker side of Iapetus and it seems to fit perfectly that this is due to collisions with the particles from this ring over the eons like bugs on a cosmic windscreen.

  7. Yeah, but by huckamania · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Now that the funny is out of the way...

    I would think that this kind of discovery could close the gap for some of the physics problems we are trying to solve. Could the headline have read 'Missing matter discovered around Saturn'? Supposedly we are missing 75% of the matter in the universe or some percentage.

    Ice in space? I wonder what we could do with that. Maybe Mars isn't so boring after all.

  8. Is it bad science day already? by Minwee · · Score: 5, Funny

    Although the ring dust is very cold -- minus 316 degrees Fahrenheit -- it shines with thermal radiation.

    That's -193'C or 80 K if you're an actual scientist.

    The bulk of the ring material starts about 3.7 million miles from the planet and extends outward about another 7.4 million miles.

    ...has an inner radius of 5.9 million kilometers and extends to 17 million km.

    >The newly found ring is so huge it would take 1 billion Earths to fill it

    That's "so huge it would take 1.03×10^29 Volkswagens to fill it"

    JPL said

    JPL is a collection of buildings in California and does not speak. Perhaps the Oracle of JPL made this prophecy?

    "This is one supersized ring," said one of the authors, Anne Verbiscer, an astronomer at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

    Unless the McDonalds in Charlottesville have changed recently, 10^29 Volkswagens would be a 'Large'. If you want supersized rings it's going to be an extra 49 cents.

  9. Re:Wait... by Yvan256 · · Score: 4, Funny

    Someone alert the media!

    I think they did!

  10. Re:Whats funny is my initial reaction to the headl by imakemusic · · Score: 5, Funny

    Is anyone looking for these invisible rings in other places?

    Yes. Fools that they are.

    --
    Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
  11. Size of Andromeda by Kelson · · Score: 5, Interesting

    NASA posted a great composite shot a few years ago showing the full moon and the Andromeda galaxy at the same angular scale.

    Astronomy Picture of the Day: Moon over Andromeda.