Images taken by the joint NASA, Italian and European Space Agency Cassini spacecraft has revealed that Saturn's rings are not smooth and even as assumed, but is in fact made up of particles with gaps in between.
NASA scientists say that particles in the ring are clumped up with empty spaces in between and often collide with each other. They added that the rings might be two or three times denser than previously thought. Josh Colwell, assistant professor of physics at the University of Central Florida, observed the rings by using spectrograph on the spacecraft and compared the brightness of a star for multiple times as the rings passed in front of the star.
"Combining many of these occultations at different viewing geometries is like doing a CAT scan of the rings. By studying the brightness of stars as the rings pass in front of them, we are able to map the ring structure in 3-D and learn more about the shape, spacing and orientation of clusters of particles", Colwell said.
"The rings are different from the picture we had in our minds. We originally thought we would see a uniform cloud of particles. Instead we find that the particles are clumped together with empty spaces in between", said Larry Esposito of the University of Colorado at Boulder and lead researcher of the study.
Esposito believes that if the Saturn rings were farther away from the planet, then they might have combined together to form a moon. But since they are so near to the planet, they are stretched apart. "If the clumps were farther from Saturn, they might aggregate even more to make a moon but because they are so close to the massive planet, they get stretched apart", he said.
The findings will be published in this month's issue of the journal Icarus.
