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The final phase of NASA's Saturn "Cbadini" mission offers scientists a unique look at the weird world of the five small moons of the planet ringed planet allows. The moons Pan partly ravioli-shaped, Daphnis, Atlas, Pandora and Epimetheus have apparently been formed by dynamic processes in Saturn's system, as the Max Planck Institute for solar system research (MPS) in göttingen announced.
The results of these measurements presented a research team implicated by MPS Thursday in the journal "Science". While most of Saturn's 62 satellites revolve around the giant planet at a great distance from the main system, the five unusual bodies of a diameter between 8 and 120 kilometers, called "moon satellites," are moving around of the second largest planet in the solar system.
Cosmic ravioli and potatoes
According to MPS, three of the deepest Saturn moons are strange worlds. With their bead thickenings along the pan of the equator, Daphnis and Atlas, therefore, in a sense, to cosmic ravioli. While Pan and Daphnis Atlas is all on the periphery of the same ring in the A ring, which is clearly visible from the Earth.
Pandora and Epimetheus, both richer in potatoes than ravioliförmig, circumscribe, according to the information, only a little outside the F circle more contiguous, much thinner and more dusty around Saturn. The measurement campaign of the last phase of the "Cbadini" mission allowed, among other things, to provide more detailed information on the thickening at the equator of the three moons of ravioli.
While at Pan this pearl accounts for about ten percent of the total, this is at Daphnis only one percent, but at Atlas 25 percent. In all three cases, the pearl is much smoother and less crenellated than the rest of the surface, indicating a younger age, according to Göttinger researchers.
Similar to cork
This also applies to the rather flat equatorial region of the Pandora moon. Overall, the surface of the five moons appears very porous, their average densities are comparable to those of cork. All of this indicates, according to MPS, a multi-stage development process in which the Saturn rings deposited on the equator of the moons are gradually emerging.
Among them, according to scientists, could be hidden a denser core, perhaps a fragment of a larger body that once surrounded Saturn and collapsed in collisions. The measurement campaign took place between April and September 2017, when "Cbadini" made the most daring maneuvers at the end of his mission and dived into the area between the planet and its deepest ring.
The NASA probe then burned as expected in the atmosphere of Saturn. Cbadini was launched in October 1997 and had the ringed planet achieved. For about 13 years, the probe then pbaded through the fascinating system of Saturn, discovering new rings and moons and revealing many secrets of the giant gas planet.
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