by MarkBour » Tue Aug 08, 2017 4:07 pm
Beautiful image. It does indeed give the illusion of "curvature" in the rings (going out radially from Saturn, not the main circular curvature itself), on two scales at least: Each small band looks almost like it is a curve (like corrugations) and the overall image appears as though it has a larger wave shape, with about 3 periods going across the entire image. That larger wave also can look like a larger curvature, like sand dunes, to the human mind/eye out of context.
If I understand correctly, though, Saturn's rings are indeed amazingly thin and flat. So all of the beautiful variations in this image between dark and light are caused by there being more or less material. More material, lighter band, less material, darker. And these changes, which I do think are visible on two distinct scales, can be called density waves (like sound waves). I don't know if that is the exact meaning Professor Nemiroff has when he says "density waves" in the caption. And I wonder if we would see the wave patterns repeated with any similarity in other ringed exoplanets, or if the kind of density waves that occur are essentially the result of randomness and many contributing factors.
Beautiful image. It does indeed give the illusion of "curvature" in the rings (going out radially from Saturn, not the main circular curvature itself), on two scales at least: Each small band looks almost like it is a curve (like corrugations) and the overall image appears as though it has a larger wave shape, with about 3 periods going across the entire image. That larger wave also can look like a larger curvature, like sand dunes, to the human mind/eye out of context.
If I understand correctly, though, Saturn's rings are indeed amazingly thin and flat. So all of the beautiful variations in this image between dark and light are caused by there being more or less material. More material, lighter band, less material, darker. And these changes, which I do think are visible on two distinct scales, can be called density waves (like sound waves). I don't know if that is the exact meaning Professor Nemiroff has when he says "density waves" in the caption. And I wonder if we would see the wave patterns repeated with any similarity in other ringed exoplanets, or if the kind of density waves that occur are essentially the result of randomness and many contributing factors.