Image of Saturn’s icy ring gone-awry has NASA baffled

[What is causing the visible disruption in Saturn’s F ring?/Photo credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

NASA is baffled by an image sent back from its Cassini space probe, which reveals an unidentified object creating a large disruption on Saturn’s F ring.

That’s the outermost discrete ring of the planet’s expansive icy rings, and lies just below the main disk.

The Weather Network describes it as frequently sporting “strange patterns and structures, such as braids, clumps, ripples and jets.”

In early April, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft captured something big and strange along this particular thin ring.

A time-lapse animation of the mysterious blip shows the passage of three of Saturn’s moons, followed by the large disruption in the F ring. It appears to be around 700 km long, and roughly 100 km wide, or as The Weather Network describes it, the size of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, end to end, with a bit of room to spare.

According to NASA, the disruption was likely created by “the interaction of a small object embedded in the ring itself and material in the core of the ring.”

“Scientists sometimes refer to these features as ‘jets’,” they explain on their website.

“Because these bodies are small and embedded in the F ring itself, they are difficult to spot at the resolution available to NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Instead, their handiwork reveals their presence, and scientists use the Cassini spacecraft to study these stealthy sculptors of the F ring.”