Spokes on Saturn's B Ring
Image Credit & Copyright:
Image Credit & Copyright:
Brad Croslin
Don’t get spooked by Saturn’s ghostly spokes! Today we feature a nearly two-hour timelapse of Saturn and its rings looping forwards and backwards. A day on Saturn is only 10 hours long,
so two hours of observation covers quite a bit of its rotation. If you look closely, a ghoulish shadow appears and disappears as
Saturn’s B ring
rotates. Decades of observation with
Voyager 2,
Cassini, and
Hubble
show the appearance of Saturn’s spokes varies with
the planet’s seasons.
Like Earth, Saturn’s
spin axis
is tilted compared to the plane of its orbit around the Sun. During Saturn’s
equinox,
the rings are
less tilted
away from the Sun and the planet receives more evenly distributed sunlight and
solar wind.
Although their origin is still uncertain, Saturn’s spokes may be shadows of and reflections off of
dust and ice levitating above the rings caused by
electromagnetic
interactions between the solar wind and the planet’s magnetic field.