Prometheus Bound to the F Ring at Saturn

What happens when you put a small world orbiting through an ethereal pair of dust and ice particle rings, all encircling the planet Saturn? You get intricate whirled and kinked structure in the rings, as seen in this image from the Cassini Mission’s imaging subsystem.

It’s all in the gravity of the situation. Prometheus (which is a natural satellite (moon) of Saturn off to the right of the F ring (center)) does a little dance with the F ring, getting closer and farther away over a period of just under 15 hours. As this little oddly-shaped moon gets close to the ring particles, its gravitational interaction draws out a stream of material. The stream then gets more misshapen as it orbits around Saturn, forming the graceful loops and curves we see in this image. The Cassini Mission pages have many more images of this phenomenon, which is yet another good reason to study a planetary system over long periods of time. Snapshots give us a frozen moment in time; long-term observations tell us a more detailed and exacting story of just how things change on both large and small scales in the solar system.

For more fascinating images from the Cassini Mission, visit the Cassini-Huygens mission web pages and do a little browsing. You’ll learn more about Saturn, its moons (particularly fascinating Titan), and those glittery, wonderful rings that have so captivated planetary scientists.