[extropy-chat] re: Raw Saturn ring images ready

[Amara Graps]

Mike Lorrey:
>This image:
>http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2.cgi?path=../multimedia/images/rings/images/SOI9.jpg&type=image

>is extremely curious. The spiralling waves appear to be the
>dissolution of spokes,

No, spokes are probably dust electromagnetically lifted off of the
rings (a process called 'dust levitation').

>or is this an effect of frame dragging?

I could be wrong since I don't know the sequencing of
the ring images, but that image looks like a high resolution
Encke Gap image  with the wavy edges gravitationally affected
by Pan.

Pan, the moonlet, was discovered in that gap in old Voyager
data by  Mark Showalter in 1990. See:

http://ringmaster.arc.nasa.gov/saturn/vgr2_pps/ppssaturn37.html
http://www.star.ucl.ac.uk/~apod/solarsys/eng/pan.htm

Amara

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Amara Graps, PhD          email: amara at amara.com
Computational Physics     vita:  ftp://ftp.amara.com/pub/resume.txt
Multiplex Answers         URL:   http://www.amara.com/
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