Cassini: Marvelous Mini-Jet
Posted: Mon Sep 16, 2013 7:17 pm
NASA | JPL-Caltech | Cassini Solstice Mission | CICLOPS | 2013 Sep 16
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Marvelous Mini-Jet
A beautiful ''mini-jet'' appears in the dynamic F ring of Saturn. Saturn's A ring (including the Keeler gap and just a hint of the Encke gap at the upper-right) also appears.
The mini-jets are thought by imaging scientists to be caused by low-speed collisions in the F ring ejecting dusty material from the ring's core. For more on the mini-jets, see Exotic Trails or Mini Jets.
This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 48 degrees below the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on June 20, 2013.
The view was obtained at a distance of approximately 841,000 miles (1.4 million kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 82 degrees. Image scale is 5 miles (8 kilometers) per pixel.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
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