Cassini - Three Moons

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Author Message
Aibo

Posts: no

Reply: 16



PostPosted: January 29, 2005 9:32 PM 

The Saturnian system with rings and moons are very well ordered with all larger and smaller moons outside the rings. Only some few really tiny moons are within the ring system itself.

You really havnt read ANY textbooks on astronomy? Well im happy to tell in any case:
I think some of you guys here are fooled by the geometry of the image, the small moons that appear to be below the ringplane are in fact much closer to Cassini.

alan

Posts: no

Reply: 17



PostPosted: January 29, 2005 10:41 PM 

Now this is weird. One of the larger moons appears to be inside the f-ring.
FullS08/N00027163.jpg

alan

Posts: no

Reply: 18



PostPosted: January 29, 2005 10:42 PM 

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/raw-images-details.cfm?feiImageID=30642

Halitosis

Posts: no

Reply: 19



PostPosted: January 30, 2005 12:22 AM 

There's no reason why a 'large' (whatever you want to consider large) object couldn't orbit around Saturn inside the ring. It would probably be a rarer event than Saturn capturing an object that then orbited outside the ring, but it still must be possible..

um3k

Posts: 898

Reply: 20



PostPosted: January 30, 2005 1:10 AM 

However, if a large object orbited inside the ring, it would create a gap in the ring quite a bit larger than itself.

Halitosis

Posts: no

Reply: 21



PostPosted: January 30, 2005 1:17 AM 

By 'inside' I don't mean in the ring, I mean inside the ring's innermost extent. Thus, if the ring stretched from 100000 km to 200000 km away, a moon orbiting at 50000 km would be 'inside' the ring.

um3k

Posts: 898

Reply: 22



PostPosted: January 30, 2005 12:39 PM 

Oh, ok.

If you wanna read about weird orbiting, look up Janus and Epimetheus.

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