X-Ray Saturn
Above, the ringed planet
Saturn
shines in x-rays.
Otherwise beyond the range of human vision, the eerie
x-ray view was created by overlaying a computer
generated
outline of the gas giant's disk and ring system on a false-color
picture of smoothed,
reconstructed
x-ray data
from the orbiting Chandra Observatory.
The data represent the first clear detection
of Saturn's disk
at x-ray energies and held some surprises for
researchers.
For starters, the x-rays seem concentrated near the planet's
equator rather than the poles, in marked contrast to
observations of Jupiter, the only
other gas giant seen at such high energies.
And while Saturn's high energy emission is found to be consistent
with the reflection of x-rays
from the Sun, the intensity of the
reflected x-rays was also found to be unusually strong.
Outside the planet's disk, only a faint suggestion of x-rays from
Saturn's magnificent
ring system
is visible at the left.