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Galleries / Million-Ring Circus

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published July 27, 2006

Titan

Rings close up

Colored rings

Rings from afar

Rhea

Three moons

Encke gap

<p>Concentric rings wind in front of Satrun's biggest moon, Titan, with tiny Janus in teh foreground. The rings are so massive that they have their own atmosphere, separate from Saturn's. Cassini found evidence of oxygen all around the icy rings.</p>
<p>Cassini sends radio signals through the rings back to Earth, allowing researchers to gauge the size and density of the particles. The bright purple ring, the B-ring is surprisingly dense and complex. Ring components may range from ant-size bits to moonlets the size of football fields.</p>
<p>Measuring 175,000 miles wide but as little as 30 feet thick, Saturn's rings contain debris of varying ages and composition, all revolving at different speeds.</p>
<p>The 450-mile-wide Rhea, Saturn's second-largest moon, hovers just below the rings, which are so astonishingly thin that researchers wonder how they hold together.</p>
<p>Titan and Dione, along with speck-sized Prometheus appear in rare alignment. Tiny so-called shepherd moons help shape the rings and prevent them from dispersing.</p>
<p>The 180-mile-wide Encke gap results from the tiny moon Pan ploughing a path through the rings, leaving behind scalloped edges and spiral patterns of density waves.</p>

More Galleries

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Scientists and engineers are working on machines to do the most difficult jobs in space: drill holes on the Moon, sail the seas of Titan, and bring back rocks from Mars.

How to Build a Telescope Even More Powerful Than Hubble

NASA is building the James Webb Space Telescope, which will be humanity's premier eye in the sky when it launches later this decade. Here's a sneak peek at the telescope that will take the universe's baby pictures.

Far Out: The Most Psychedelic Images in Science

Scientists know you don't need psychedelic drugs to make mind-blowing psychedelic images: Fractals, particle collisions, computer simulations, and sunspots will do the job just fine.

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