This is the Web Edition of "A Trip Into Space", a Coimbra-based electronic book on space science. Both the texts and the photos are by courtesy of National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
| This is the Web Edition of "A Trip Into Space", a Coimbra-based electronic book on space science. Both the texts and the photos are by courtesy of National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
|
A Trip Into Space  Saturn Satellites And Rings Saturn's F-Ring |
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| See also: Saturnian Rings Fact Sheet, Saturn - Ring System |   |
This synthesized picture illustrates the brightness contours that represent the fine structure observed in Saturn's F-ring using a stellar occultation profile compiled by the Voyager 2 photopolarimeter. Because of the instrument's high sensitivity and the small apparent size of the star used, Delta Scorpii, structure was observed on a much finer scale -- hundreds of meters -- than would otherwise be possible. The highest-resolution of the Voyager imaging system is seldom better than 10 kilometers. The F-ring was represented here by sweeping the "trace" in longitude with much the same overall form as seen at several points by the imaging system, with a dense outer core and a diffuse set of inner strands. A great deal of radial structure at the subkilometer scale, however, is evident in these data. It must be remembered that the azimuthal symmetry and lack of kinks or knots here are only artifacts of the representation, which takes a single narrow slice of the rings. The Voyager Project is managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
Last Update: 2004-Nov-27