ilan
10-05-2018, 12:01 PM
Saturn's ring rain is a downpour, not a drizzle
Alison Klesman, Astronomy | Published: Thursday, October 4, 2018
A surprising amount of complex organic molecules fall from the planet's rings onto its atmosphere, Cassini data show.
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2018/10/SaturnRingSmallParticles.jpg?mw=500&mh=400
Saturn's rings are made of individual particles, from dust grains to car- and house-sized
boulders. This image shows the density of the rings: Purple indicates regions with larger
particles (bigger than about 2 inches), while green and blue indicate regions with smaller
particles (less than 2 inches).
Before it plunged into the atmosphere of Saturn on its final death dive, the Cassini spacecraft made 22 orbits of the planet that followed a path no probe had taken before: It flew between the massive planet and its rings. During those final orbits, Cassini’s Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) spotted water ice and complex organic molecules flowing from the rings to the atmosphere of the planet: ring rain. But it turns out, “ring rain is more like a ring downpour,” according to Hunter Waite of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), lead author of a paper on the findings published October 4 in Science.
The rain itself wasn’t a surprise. “Based on previous work, scientists expected water was raining from the rings into Saturn's atmosphere,” said study co-author Kelly Miller, also of SwRI. She added that the spacecraft was even oriented in a way to intentionally use its radio antenna “as an umbrella to protect it from debris.” What was a surprise, though, was the amount of rain — it was “way faster than anyone thought,” said Waite. The data clock the downpour at a rate of 22,000 pounds (10,000 kilograms) of material falling onto the planet from its rings per second.
That's a lot of rain.
Alison Klesman, Astronomy | Published: Thursday, October 4, 2018
A surprising amount of complex organic molecules fall from the planet's rings onto its atmosphere, Cassini data show.
http://www.astronomy.com/-/media/Images/News%20and%20Observing/News/2018/10/SaturnRingSmallParticles.jpg?mw=500&mh=400
Saturn's rings are made of individual particles, from dust grains to car- and house-sized
boulders. This image shows the density of the rings: Purple indicates regions with larger
particles (bigger than about 2 inches), while green and blue indicate regions with smaller
particles (less than 2 inches).
Before it plunged into the atmosphere of Saturn on its final death dive, the Cassini spacecraft made 22 orbits of the planet that followed a path no probe had taken before: It flew between the massive planet and its rings. During those final orbits, Cassini’s Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) spotted water ice and complex organic molecules flowing from the rings to the atmosphere of the planet: ring rain. But it turns out, “ring rain is more like a ring downpour,” according to Hunter Waite of Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), lead author of a paper on the findings published October 4 in Science.
The rain itself wasn’t a surprise. “Based on previous work, scientists expected water was raining from the rings into Saturn's atmosphere,” said study co-author Kelly Miller, also of SwRI. She added that the spacecraft was even oriented in a way to intentionally use its radio antenna “as an umbrella to protect it from debris.” What was a surprise, though, was the amount of rain — it was “way faster than anyone thought,” said Waite. The data clock the downpour at a rate of 22,000 pounds (10,000 kilograms) of material falling onto the planet from its rings per second.
That's a lot of rain.