(ORDO NEWS) — New images of Saturn taken by NASA‘s Hubble Space Telescope herald the start of the “spoke season” associated with the planet’s equinox.
At this time, mysterious phenomena appear on the rings of Saturn. The reason for the appearance of the spokes, as well as their seasonal variability, has not yet been fully explained by planetary scientists.
Like Earth, Saturn has four seasons. However, due to Saturn’s much larger orbit, each season lasts approximately seven Earth years.
The equinox occurs when the rings are tilted edge-on to the Sun. The spokes disappear as the summer or winter solstice on Saturn approaches.
The autumnal equinox in the northern hemisphere of Saturn will occur on May 6, 2025. As it approaches, the spokes are expected to become more prominent.
The alleged culprit for the appearance of the spokes is the planet’s variable magnetic field. Planetary magnetic fields interact with the solar wind to create an electrically charged environment.
Scientists believe that the smallest particles of the ice ring can also be charged, causing them to temporarily rise above the larger ice particles and boulders in the rings.
Ring spokes were first seen by NASA’s Voyager mission in the early 1980s.
“Thanks to the Hubble OPAL program, which is building an archive of data on the planets of the outer solar system, this season we will have more time to study the spokes of Saturn than ever before,” said NASA Senior Planetary Scientist Amy Simon, Hubble Program Manager » Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL).
Saturn’s last equinox occurred in 2009 when NASA’s Cassini spacecraft orbited the gas giant.
The Cassini mission was completed in 2017, and the Voyagers are long gone, so Hubble continues to work on long-term monitoring of changes on Saturn and other outer planets.
The Hubble OPAL program will add both visual and spectroscopic data to Cassini’s archive of observations.
The scientists hope to piece the pieces of data together to get a more complete picture of the spokes phenomenon.
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