Cassini: F Ring Shines

[bystander]

NASA | JPL-Caltech | Cassini Solstice Mission | CICLOPS | 2012 Nov 19

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F Ring Shines

The rich dynamics of Saturn's F ring are on display in this image taken by the Cassini spacecraft. Most of the features seen here are believed to be due to the ring's interactions with its shepherd moons or with small moonlets embedded within the ring itself.

In this image, a bright clump of material is also caught just outside the main part of the ring (on the right side of the image below the middle). The brightness of the clump in this observation geometry suggests it's made of dusty material. At the left edge of the image, the A ring is also visible.

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 19 degrees below the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 28, 2012.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 474,000 miles (763,000 kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 146 degrees. Image scale is 3 miles (4 kilometers) per pixel.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

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[Beyond]

So, at 3-miles per pixel, how many pixels long is the clumpy bright spot??

[rstevenson]

So, at 3-miles per pixel, how many pixels long is the clumpy bright spot??

Here's a blowup of it. Assuming the enlarged image from which I copied this contains all the pixels they are talking about, you can count them yourself. It kind of fades out at either end, so you get to choose how much to include.

Rob

[Beyond]

Thanks Rob! So the bright spot, being in the area of about 36-40 pixels long, is a little over 100 miles long. Hmm... about the size of Connecticut.

[neufer]

[img3="The Oxbow, Connecticut River, 1836, by Thomas Cole. "Connecticut" is
a French corruption of the Algonquian quinetucket: "long tidal river". "]http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... n_1836.jpg[/img3]

Thanks Rob!

So the bright spot, being in the area of about 36-40 pixels long, is a little over 100 miles long.

Hmm... about the size of Connecticut.

[owlice]

Wow; what a spectacular image!

What a spectacular mission!