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Mars Base

Is Saturn Making a New Moon? - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...is-saturn-making-a-new-moon

scibyte127 SaturnRings

shared by Mars Base on 15 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • A bright clump spotted orbiting Saturn at the outermost edge of its A ring may be a brand new moon in the process of being born
  • have not seen anything like this before
  • In images acquired with Cassini’s narrow-angle camera in 2013
  • ...7 more annotations...
  • a 1,200-kilometer-long, 10-kilometer-wide arc of icy material was observed traveling along the edge of the A ring
  • The arc is thought to be the result of gravitational perturbations caused by an as-yet unseen embedded object about a kilometer wide — possibly a miniature moon in the process of formation
  • The half-mile-wide object has been unofficially named “Peggy,”
  • According to the team’s paper, Peggy’s effects on the A ring has been visible to Cassini since May 2012
  • Eventually Peggy may coalesce into a slightly larger moon and move outward, establishing its own orbital path around Saturn
  • This is how many of Saturn’s other moons are thought to have formed much further back in the planet’s history
  • While it is possible that the bright perturbation is the result of an object’s breakup rather than formation, researchers are still looking forward to finding out more about its evolution.
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