Space Exploration

Saturn’s Barbs More great science from Cassini

The Cassini robot, still in orbit around Saturn, continues to pick out very cool features of the ringed planet. Recently, it discovered perturbations of the F ring, caused by half-mile size chunks of ice; large enough to disturb the orbits of the tiny ice crystals that make up the ring. Some of these features are transitory, and some appear relatively permanent. At any rate, they’re quite beautiful.

There’s a great article with videos on the Cassini homepage at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory web-site, and a composite of several images below.

NASA/JPL