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Mahesh

06/09/24 09:47 AM IST

Why Saturn’s majestic rings will briefly ‘disappear’ in march 2025

In News
  • There are few sights in the Solar System as majestic as the rings of Saturn. But in March 2025, these rings will “disappear”.
About Saturn
  • Saturn, which is tilted at an angle of 26.73 degrees, takes about 29.4 Earth years to complete a single orbit of the Sun.
  • This means that for half of a Saturn year (roughly 15 years), the gas giant is tilted towards the Sun, and for the other half it is tilted away from it.
  • Its rings too are tilted at the same angle, and as the planet revolves, they appear to change their orientation when viewed from Earth.
  • Every 13 to 15 years, the edge of Saturn’s rings aligns directly with Earth.
  • This is what will happen in March 2025 when only the edges of the ring will be visible from our planet.
  • Since Saturn’s rings are very thin — just tens of metres thick in most places — at this position, they will reflect very little light, essentially making them invisible. (Imagine viewing the edge of a thin sheet of paper from a great distance.)
  • But as Saturn continues to go around the Sun, its rings will gradually reappear.
  • This phenomenon last occurred in 2009.
  • NASA confirmed in 2018 that Saturn will indeed lose its rings for good.
  • In fact Saturn’s rings are constantly being pulled towards the planet because of its gravity and magnetic field.
  • Saturn’s rings are made of billions of chunks of ice and rock, whose size varies from as small as grains of dust to as large as mountains.
  • According to current consensus, the rings evolved just a 100 million years ago due to the collision of two icy moons.
  • The debris from this event created Saturn’s signature rings.
  • Saturn possesses rings that span a massive distance — nearly five times the diameter of Earth.
  • There are seven major ring divisions, each possessing a complex structure.
Source- Indian Express

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