DPS-ing - Rings
The annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) is taking place this week in Pasadena. Today marks the first of several sessions devoted to my favorite topic: planetary rings. A beautiful mosaic of Saturn was released today that was taken in a unique observation by Cassini where the spacecraft spent several hours in the shadow of Saturn and looked back toward the Sun. It’s a fantastic mosaic. Check it out. In this geometry, small particles, cleverly referred to as “dust” by us ring scientists, are particularly bright. It’s like looking back toward the projector in a movie theater 50 years ago when people still smoked in theaters. The particles are too small to block the light completely, instead scattering the light by small angles. Bigger particles block the light, so looking back toward the Sun we just see the light scattered by dust. This geometry allowed Cassini scientists to discover a new dust ring associated with the moons Janus and Epimetheus.