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Planetary science

Saturn's bared mini-moons

Nature volume 440, pages 614–615 (2006)Cite this article

Propeller-shaped structures seem to reveal the presence of moonlets, about 100 metres in diameter, embedded in Saturn's rings. This discovery adds to our picture of how the rings formed and are evolving.

The question of where Saturn's magnificent system of rings came from has intrigued planetary scientists for centuries. A currently favoured thesis is that the flat disk of the main rings, which girdle the planet's equator, originated in the dispersion of material from the disruption of an icy satellite following the impact of a comet or asteroid1,2. Such a giant impact would have left behind debris in a broad range of sizes. But apart from two moons of kilometre size, only a main population of ice particles from a few centimetres to a few metres across has so far been deduced from remote sensing3. The detection of propeller-shaped brightness undulations in the rings, reported by Tiscareno et al. on page 648 of this issue4, supplies the first evidence for large ring particles of between 40 and 120 metres in diameter. Their discovery bridges the size gap between the main population and the embedded moons.

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Figure 1: Moonlet and propeller.
Figure 2: Saturn's rings.

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  1. the Arbeitsgruppe Nichtlineare Dynamik, Universität Potsdam, Postfach 601553, Potsdam, 14469, Germany

    Frank Spahn & Jürgen Schmidt

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  1. Frank Spahn
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  2. Jürgen Schmidt
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Spahn, F., Schmidt, J. Saturn's bared mini-moons. Nature 440, 614–615 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1038/440614a

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