Yet another cool Cassini discovery!

[GregW]

http://ciclops.lpl.arizona.edu/view.php?id=1071

Click on the thumbnail to watch the animated GIF

Cassini’s celestial sleuthing has paid off with this time-lapse series of images which confirmed earlier suspicions that a small moon was orbiting within the narrow Keeler gap.

The movie sequence (which consists of 12 images taken over 16 minutes while Cassini gazed down upon the sunlit side of the A ring) shows a tiny moon orbiting in the center of the Keeler Gap, churning up waves in the gap edges as it goes. Note that the pattern of waves travels with the moon in its orbit.

The Keeler gap is located about 250 kilometers (155 miles) interior to the outer edge of the A ring, which is also the outer edge of the bright main rings. The new object is about 7 kilometers (4 miles) across and reflects about 50 percent of the sunlight light that falls upon it – a brightness that is typical of particles in the nearby rings.

The new body has been provisionally named S/2005 S1.

Imaging scientists predicted the moon’s presence and its orbital distance from Saturn after sighting in July, 2004 a set of peculiar spiky and wispy features in the Keeler gap’s outer edge. The similarities of the Keeler gap features to those noted in Saturn’s F ring and the Encke gap led the scientists to conclude that a small body, a few kilometers across, was lurking in the center of the Keeler gap, awaiting discovery.

Image of the new moon(?):

[Taxloss]

1. That rocks!

So to speak. I love this kind of thing.

[leftofthedial]

2. wow!

I don't have a job. I don't have health insurance. But there is a rock in the Keeler Gap. Woo hoo.