Station Cassini has sent a photo of Pandora and Titan

Interplanetary probe Cassini have worked for many years for the benefit of mankind, sending information about Saturn and its environment. Now the unit sent to Earth photo of Pandora and Titan - two satellites of the gas giant. Here a small Pandora is much closer to Cassini than Titan vague (it is about three times more). And even despite this, Titanium (with a diameter of 5150 kilometers) looks like a giant compared with Pandora (only 81 kilometers in diameter). This gives some idea of ​​how different characteristics of the moon of Saturn.

Titan's north at the top, it is rotated by 19 degrees to the right. By the way, the picture is made visible spectrum (green light), one of the instruments Cassini's July 4th of this year.

Before the Titan is about 1, 9 million kilometers. Titan scaling the picture - 12 kilometers per pixel. Pandora at a distance of 698 000 kilometers from the spacecraft. As for Pandora, then each pixel accounts for 4 kilometers.

In early September, Cassini discovered Saturn's ring , consisting of fragments of the former satellites of the gas giant.

Who is using Cassini was able to detect, as scientists believe, the youngest ring of Saturn. Probably, it is made up of remnants of the disintegrated under the influence of the gravitational field of the planet satellites of the gas giant.



Ring as the researchers found, is composed of fairly large blocks of ice. The data are analyzed by the scientists, they were received station in August of 2009 - while Cassini was in the equinox, which allowed to observe the rings, the structure.

Researchers have been able to determine the temperature in the ring A (one of the secondary planet ring giant), which in turn allowed to determine the average size of the particles making up the ring. As it turned out after all the necessary calculations, the ring is made up of ice blocks the size of which is about one meter. This is a fairly large objects - other rings of Saturn are made up of much smaller particles. Large objects in the composition of the rings break up over time to smaller, though, it takes tens of millions of years.

Cassini mission specialists have determined that about 100 million years ago, are now instead of studying ring around Saturn is the satellite that was destroyed over time. In 2016, the station Cassini must fly far away from the gas giant, which will clarify the situation.

Source: geektimes.ru/post/263544/