Ever dreamt of flying through the deep and charismatic rings of our Saturn??? Yeah cool!!??? It will surely be amazing to dive into the depths of moons and moonlets, water ice, dust and rocks surrounding our gas giant. Have a look on the above pic to see these majestic rings of Saturn taken by Cassini spacecraft in 2005, during its mission from 2004 -2017. In 1610, when Galileo 1st observed Saturn’s rings and called them “ears”, it was Huygens who corrected the concept to “disks” in 1655. From then, we have now reached this platform where we observed a curved line, almost brown in colour, depicting Saturn’s rings. Shadows on the upper part of Saturn is fairly good in giving a clear idea of its complexity. Cassini-Huygen, a collaborated work of NASA, ESA & ASI was the 1st space probe to reach Saturn’s rings and unwounded moon-ring interactions as well as the atmosphere of the planet. Saturns’ Northern hemisphere appears partly blue due to greater scattering of light by molecules in the cloudless region, but the Southern does not seem the same. maybe due to its higher clouds – just a hypothesis. Still, we have to inquest more to unwind several hidden facts of this mysterious world.
– SREEBALA P S
Image Credit: NASA, ESA, JPL, ISS, Cassini Imaging Team; Processing & License: Judy Schmidt.
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