NASA Telescope Discovers Giant Ring Around Saturn

PASADENA, Calif. — The Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered the biggest but never-before-seen ring around the planet Saturn, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced late Tuesday.

The thin array of ice and dust particles lies at the far reaches of the Saturnian system and its orbit is tilted 27 degrees from the planet's main ring plane, the laboratory said.

This is just amazing! The article goes on to explain that Saturn's moon Phoebe is the source of the material in this ring. This is just too cool!

Source: www.foxnews.com...


Here is the photo:

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/768e75fc555e.jpg[/atsimg]

[edit on 10/7/2009 by wrangell76]

I was just reading about this on another site:

www.dailymail.co.uk...

What a great find - and really does highlight just what other mysteries there are waiting to be discovered.....


Also the Beeb have some good info:

news.bbc.co.uk...


[edit on 7/10/09 by AlwaysQuestion]

reply to post by wrangell76


Aww you beat me to it , I was just translating an article from one of my local services

This is a great find , I wonder what will come from it

Just heard about this!

Wonder if it's the remnants of another smaller body (moon/planet) that hit saturn or crumbled up millions or even billions of years ago, and has yet to reform into another planetoid.

This seems to be the most likely explanation so far:

In particular the ring may answer the riddle of another moon around Saturn, Iapetus, which has a bright side and a very dark side. Scientists think that the debris from Phoebe is not only creating the ring but impacting with Iapetus, which is going the opposite way, creating a thick layer of dust on one side of the planet over billions of years.

[edit on 7-10-2009 by john124]