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Imaging Diary - Cassini
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Alliance Member Comments
Dwarfed Wavemaker |
NeKto 2013-04-24 11:20:09 | View all member's comments | i think we may have learned more about gravity and gravitational interactions from watching the rings of Saturn than any other source. with the small moons like Daphnis, i wonder how stable they are. if the gravitational tides change, could the small moons be pulled into pieces? if some of them are really rubble piles, i would think it would not take much to return them to ring material. | |
Rev141 |
Dragon_of_Luck_Mah_Jonng1971 2010-12-06 18:24:16 | View all member's comments | Mercury_3488: The closest approach distances will be 53 000 ml/85 000 km to Daphnis, 72000 ml/116 000 km to Pan, 68 000 ml/109 000 km to Pandora and 62 000 ml/100 000 km to Dione. All those flybys will happen on Dec. 20, 2010, Spacecraft Event Time. | |
Rev141 |
Mercury_3488 2010-12-06 15:18:50 | View all member's comments | Do we know what the closest approach distances will be to Daphnis, Pan, Pandora, & Dione during rev 142?
Great to see Dione again, mind you Daphnis, Pan & Pandora are all worth looking at again too. :)
The 110 x 88 x 62 km sized moon Pandora in earlier images on: Monday 5th September 2005, show a large, deep crater that to me looks a little like the deep ones on main belt Asteroid 253 Mathilde, impact into a low density body.
Andrew Brown.
Andrew Brown. | |
Complex Edge Waves |
Harry 2009-09-16 17:10:01 | View all member's comments | So very COOL! Wouldn't it be interesting to actually stand on Daphnis and see this "gravitational drag" in person?... This would make a great scene in Star Trek although it would probably be so bizarre as to confound the audience. | |
Edge Wave Shadows |
stowaway 2009-09-14 10:31:30 | View all member's comments | Along the outside edge of the Encke gap (above Daphnis in the image) there appear to be smaller vertical features casting shadows similarly. Is there an explanation for this? | |
Complex Edge Waves |
carolyn 2009-09-05 09:04:55 | View all member's comments | pygar: All the bodies in the rings -- ring particles and embedded moons -- travel at the speed appropriate for their distance from Saturn. The farther from Saturn, the slower they travel. Consequently, if you were sitting on Daphnis, the particles closer to Saturn can overtake and eventually pass the moon and get ahead of it; the ones farther away from Saturn, again seen from Daphnis, pass the moon going in the opposite direction and consequently fall behind. Also, the disturbances that Daphnis generates in the trajectories of the particles take affect *after* the particles pass the moon. Put these two circumstances together and you find that the particles on the inside track (closer to Saturn) exhibit disturbed motion ahead of the moon, and those on the outside track (farther from Saturn) show disturbed motion behind the moon. And that's what we see in the waves generated by Daphnis on the inside and outside edges of the Keeler gap. | |
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