7/3/2004: Rings of Saturn

[Undertoad]

Elspode points out the beautiful Saturn rings images sent
back by Cassini. This large IotD is warranted by the fact
that it has almost no color and so compressed down very
nicely, viewable for modem users.

The full story says maybe the rings are a broken-up moon,
and maybe there was a recent collision between the rings and
something with oxygen:

One early result intriguing scientists concerns Saturn's Cassini
Division, the large gap between the A and B rings. While Saturn's
rings are almost exclusively composed of water ice, new findings show
the Cassini Division contains relatively more "dirt" than ice. Further,
the particles between the rings seem remarkably similar to the dark
material that scientists saw on Saturn's moon, Phoebe. These dark
particles refuel the theory that the rings might be the remnants of a
moon. The F ring was also found to contain more dirt.

Another instrument on Cassini has detected large quantities of oxygen at
the edge of the rings. Scientists are still trying to understand these results,
but they think the oxygen may be left over from a collision that occurred as
recently as January of this year.

"In just two days, our ideas about the rings have been expanded
tremendously," said Dr. Linda Spilker, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., deputy project scientist for the Cassini-Huygens
mission. "The Phoebe-like material is a big surprise. What puzzles us
is that the A and B rings are so clean and the Cassini Division between
them appears so dirty."