comic | episodes & e-books | store | about
< previous post | next post > | all news from Mar. 2017 News archive | News search | RSS
 
  Cassini sees tiny Pan's giant ridgeMar 13, 2017 9:48 PM PDT | url
 
Added 1 new A* page:NASA's Cassini probe is getting some great stuff in its last sweeps through the Saturnian system; it just passed within 25,000 km of the tiny, 35-km-wide inner moon Pan and found the moon's shape dominated by a massive equatorial ridge:
 
Image
image by ASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute (source)
 
^ More photos of the strangely shaped moon on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's site at that "source" link. : ) The equatorial ridge forms when material from Saturn's nearby rings falls onto the moon as it sweeps past them. Such ridges are not unusual among Saturn's moons: Atlas and the much larger Iapetus have them, for instance.
 
Thanks to my brother for tipping me off to the new Pan photos. : )
 
 
 
 
·····
 
 
 
 
 
< previous post | next post > | all news from Mar. 2017 News archive | News search | RSS
 
© Copyright 2024 Ben Chamberlain. All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy