SPACE — The Hubble Telescope reveals fascinating details of the rings of the planet Saturn. On the thick white inside of Saturn’s rings, there is a shadowy appearance that almost looks like a dirty fingerprint. These features are the spokes of Saturn’s mysterious rings.
Saturn’s ring spokes are Earth-sized features that appear to rotate with the rings. But scientists don’t know what it is.
These spokes are only visible for two or three rotations around the planet before disappearing. This means that capturing this photo of Saturn’s radius is a difficult task.
These spokes were first seen in 1981 by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. Subsequently, they appeared several times during the Cassini mission, which orbited Saturn from 2004 to 2017.
Now, the Hubble telescope is monitoring this unusual feature as part of the Outer Planets Atmospheric Legacy (OPAL) program, which monitors the weather in our solar system’s gas giants.
“The main theory is that the spokes are related to Saturn’s strong magnetic field. “There is some kind of interaction of the sun with the magnetic field that produces these spokes,” said OPAL program lead scientist Amy Simon of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in a statement, reported by Space.
Past Hubble images show that the spokes appear seasonally. The seasons on Saturn each last about seven years.
“We are approaching the Saturnian equinox, when we expect maximum radius activity, with higher frequencies. Darker fingers will appear in the next few years,” says Simon.
This is because Saturn’s tilt at the equinox orients the planet and its rings in such a way that the solar wind can collide with the planet’s magnetic field more strongly. That way, it can produce clearer fingers.
Scientists hope Hubble’s continued observations of Saturn and its rings will help unravel the mystery of the spokes.
2023-12-23 04:11:00
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