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If you thought the rings surrounding Saturn were imposingly large, then the word imposing just took on a whole new meaning thanks to eye-popping imagery captured by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope.
Massive new ring found orbiting Saturn. Image: NASA/JPL.
More pointedly, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has revealed images showcasing a massive ring orbiting Saturn that reaches almost eight million miles from the planet and consists of miniscule migrated particles of dust and ice kicked up from meteor and comet impacts upon Saturn’s moon, Phoebe.
“The particles are very, very tiny, so the ring is very, very tenuous; and actually if you were standing in the ring itself, you wouldn’t even know it,” commented Dr. Anne Verbiscer of the University of Virginia in a BBC News report. “In a cubic km of space, there are all of 10-20 particles.”
Located at the very edge of the Saturnian system and orbiting on a 27-degree tilted angle when compared to Saturn’s recognised band of closely situated rings, the newly photographed ring is, according to a JPL spokesperson, “very diffuse and does not reflect much visible light but the infrared Spitzer telescope was able to detect it.”
The almost imperceptible ring of dust is believed to have a super cold temperature of minus 316 degrees Fahrenheit, with much of the ring orbiting at a distance of 3.7 million miles from Saturn and stretching out by a further 7.4 million miles.
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