New images from the Hubble Space Telescope show that Saturn has entered “lightning season,” with dark structures in its rings. It is not known how they are formed.
The Hubble Space Telescope has captured new images of Saturn, showing the start of the “spot” season on its rings. When the planet is near the equinox, its rings they have dark, lightning-shaped structures, and the most intriguing thing is that we still don’t know how they form and why they have seasonal variability.
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In the new photo, there are some dark structures in one of Saturn’s rings. Although they look like diffuse spots, the shape and color of these formations can vary: they can appear lighter or darker, depending on the angle from which they are observed, and they can look more like bubbles than rays, as happened in the nova Photography .
Look down:
These rays can be formed by the Saturn’s magnetic field. When the magnetic fields of the planets interact with the solar wind, they create an electrically charged environment and, in the case of this planet, it is possible that the particles of the frozen ring also become charged. In this scenario they may be temporarily raised above the others and accumulate in rings, forming spokes.
Just like the earth, Saturn is also tilted on its axis and therefore has four seasons. On Saturn, the equinoxes occur when the rings are tilted “sideways” towards the Sun – at the moment, the planet is approaching the autumnal equinox in its northern hemisphere, which will occur in May.
Lightning was first observed during the early 1980s. As Saturn moves closer and closer to the equinox, lightning will become more prominent and observable; then they should disappear as the planet approaches the summer or winter solstice.
It’s worth mentioning that the other gaseous planets in the Solar System also have rings, but none of them compare to Saturn when it comes to studying these phenomena. “It’s a magical and fascinating freak of nature that we’ve only seen on Saturn, at least until now,” said Amy Simon, leader of the Hubble Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) program.
Source: NASA
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