(ORDO NEWS) — Approximately once a decade, mysterious dark and light structures, “spokes”, appear on the largest of Saturn’s rings.
Their nature remains a complete mystery, but recently the Hubble telescope recorded the beginning of the next “spoke season”. Now astronomers will watch them with special attention.
In the system of Saturn’s rings, the brightest and widest is the B ring.
Back in the 1970s, astronomers noticed that from time to time “spokes” begin to appear on it – radial structures, slightly lighter or darker than the ring itself, which appear and disappear behind counted hours.
They are observed for several years, reaching a maximum during the local equinox, spring and summer, and then disappear.
The closest of these will occur on Saturn on May 6, 2025, and the Hubble Space Telescope has already noticed the onset of another “spoke season”.
According to Amy Simon and her co-authors, the Hubble OPAL science program, which is devoted to the study of the atmospheres of distant planets in the solar system, will allow us to take a closer look at this mysterious phenomenon.
Indeed, the nature of the “spokes” of ring B remains unclear. Until now, it is impossible even to predict the moment at which they begin to appear or “dissolve” completely.
As Amy Simon noted , “It is also impossible to know in advance when exactly the first thunderstorm will occur in the rainy season.”
It is not known whether such “spokes” occur in other rings of Saturn and in rings around other planets.
Perhaps Hubble’s new observations will help answer these questions and finally explain why all this is happening.
Some hypotheses explain the appearance of “spokes” with collisions of ring B with clouds of micrometeorites. However, the version that connects them with the magnetic field of Saturn remains more popular.
The magnetosphere of a giant planet is distinguished not only by great strength, but also by inconstancy.
It is likely that at certain periods of its orbit, due to complex interactions with the solar wind, it directly affects the B ring.
This can cause the smallest particles of the ring to be magnetized, causing them to rise above or descend below its plane.
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