Saturn's Rings Reveal How to Make a Moon (IMAGE)

Queen Mary University of London

Saturn's Rings Reveal How to Make a Moon

Caption

This disturbance visible at the outer edge of Saturn's A ring could be caused by an object replaying the birth process of icy moons. Writing in the journal Icarus, Professor Carl Murray from Queen Mary's Astronomy Unit reports that recently discovered disturbances at the very edge of Saturn's outer bright A ring result from a small icy object that formed within the ring and which may be in the process of migrating out of it. They have nicknamed the object, 'Peggy'. This image is a portion of an observation recorded by the narrow-angle camera of Cassini's imaging science subsystem on April 15, 2013. The bright feature at the edge of the A ring is about 750 miles (about 1,200 kilometers) long.

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NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

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