Tag Archives: saturns rings

NASA Releases Images of Earth by Distant Spacecraft

PASADENA, Calif. — Color and black-and-white images of Earth taken by two NASA interplanetary spacecraft on July 19 show our planet and its moon as bright beacons from millions of miles away in space.

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured the color images of Earth and the moon from its perch in the Saturn system nearly 900 million miles (1.5 billion kilometers) away. MESSENGER, the first probe to orbit Mercury, took a black-and-white image from a distance of 61 million miles (98 million kilometers) as part of a campaign to search for natural satellites of the planet. (more…)

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Saturn’s Rings Are Remnants of Massive Moon, Study Says

Saturn's rings. Image credit: NASA/JPL

A new study conducted by scientists at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, has this week posited that Saturn’s rings are the remnants of a massive moon that once orbited Earth’s distant neighbour.

According to study author and astronomer Robin Canup, the moon plunged into Saturn around 4.5 billion years ago due to a giant ring of hydrogen gas responsible for creating rocky satellites but also for dragging larger moons out of orbit.

The scientific theory centres on the predominantly icy composition of Saturn’s rings, The Tech Herald reports. (more…)

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