The latest news from NASA is the discovery and imaging of a new moon orbiting Saturn. Scientists at JPL anticipated this find when earlier photos showed scalloped waves in the ring structure of Saturn, caused by the gravitational pull of an undiscovered mass within the Keeler Gap.
The Keeler gap is located about 250 kilometers (155 miles) inside the outer edge of the A ring, which is also the outer edge of the bright main rings. The new object is about 7 kilometers (4 miles) across and reflects about 50 percent of the sunlight light that falls upon it — a brightness that is typical of particles in the nearby rings. The new body has been provisionally named S/2005 S1
Scientists at JPL and the Space Science Institute (image processing center) in Colorado have been busy. Thousands of images from The Cassini spacecraft are being analyzed, and hundreds are presented for public viewing at the NASA Photo Archives. Here are a few pictures of Saturn's other moons, and the best picture of Saturn (to date).
Saturn's moon Enceladus, the most reflective body in our solar system. The surface of this moon is pure water ice.
This view shows one of the huge impact basins on the terminator of Saturn's moon Iapetus and a smaller, but still fairly large, crater near the southern bright-dark boundary. Just visible near the western limb, in the dark territory of Cassini Regio, is the moon's mysterious equatorial ridge. The ridge was discovered in Cassini images and reaches 20 kilometers (12 miles) high in places. This view shows principally the leading hemisphere on Iapetus. North is up and tilted 15 degrees to the right. Iapetus is 1,468 kilometers (912 miles) across.
A scene straight out of science fiction, this fantastic view shows, from left to right, Saturn's moon's Mimas, Dione and Rhea. The trailing hemispheres of all three moons are sunlit here, and wispy markings can be seen on the limbs of both Dione and Rhea. The diameter of Mimas is 397 kilometers (247 miles), Dione is 1,118 kilometers (695 miles) and Rhea is 1,528 kilometers (949 miles).
Article comments
1 - RJ
Let's nuke Enceladus until the H2O runs wet.
I'm all about terraforming...
2 - Bennett
Interesting idea RJ. So we could turn this shiny moon into... wait... it will come to me.... Chernobyl!
:]
Ouch, that's some terraforming!
3 - RJ
Just wait a few thousand years after the radioactive dust has settled, and it'll be safe enough for human explorers... ;-)