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NASA Discovers Giant Ring Around Saturn
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."
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.
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?
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.
That's -193'C or 80 K if you're an actual scientist.
...has an inner radius of 5.9 million kilometers and extends to 17 million km.
That's "so huge it would take 1.03×10^29 Volkswagens to fill it"
JPL is a collection of buildings in California and does not speak. Perhaps the Oracle of JPL made this prophecy?
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.
Is anyone looking for these invisible rings in other places?
Yes. Fools that they are.
Brain surgery - it's not rocket science!
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.
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.