Saturn's new ring

There was recently a new ring around Saturn that was discovered by the spitzer space telescope. The telescope was launched in 2003 and is currently 66 million miles away from earth. This ring is the largest of all the rings surrounding Saturn. It has an orbit tilted at 27 degrees from the main ring plane. Saturn’s farthest moon called Phoebe circles around this ring. This ring is composed of ice and dust particles. The reason this new discovery has many scientists interested is because it may help to solve an old riddle about one of Saturn’s moons. This moon is called Lapetus and what is so abnormal about the moon is that one side appears very bright while the other seems dark. This appearance makes the moon look like the symbol of a ying yang. The new ring that was discovered is circling in the same direction as Phoebe. Lapetus, on the other hand, is going the opposite way. According to the scientists, some of the dark and dusty material from the outer ring moves inward toward Lapetus. This causes one side to appear darker than the other one.

This ring is hard to see using visible light telescopes because its particles are diffuse. The small amount of particles in this ring could not reflect a lot of visible light, which is why using a visible light telescope, would not work. The spitzer telescope, which was used, could sense the glow of the cool dust. This dust is minus 316 degrees F.

Source: http://geology.com/nasa/saturn-largest-ring

-Audrey Gleason