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Solar system

Saturn's ring rain

A Correction to this article was published on 01 May 2013

Saturn's atmosphere bears a latent image of its icy rings, implying that electrically charged bits of water ice are being transported along magnetic-field lines of force from sources in the ring plane to the upper atmosphere. See Letter p.193

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Figure 1: Saturn's rings and magnetic field.

CAROL LADD/NASA

Figure 2: Saturn's atmospheric transmission and H3+ emission lines in the near infrared.

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Correspondence to Jack Connerney.

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Connerney, J. Saturn's ring rain. Nature 496, 178–179 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1038/496178a

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