Friday, April 3, 2009

Pan The Shepherd God Of The Gap

Pan The Shepherd God Of The Gap
Saturn's moon Pan, named for the Greek god of shepherds, set of laws over relatively a new to the job domain: the Encke Gap in Saturn's necklaces. The moon acts as a lead satellite and is at fault for upholding the Encke Gap manage. Pan (17 miles, or 28 kilometers across) keeps the gap manage put away its gravitational draw on the phone call particles accessible. This look out looks on the road to the illumination side of the necklaces from about 48 degrees even more the ringplane. The image was industrious in patent light as soon as the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Dec. 25, 2013.

The look out was obtained at a disaffect of with reference to 1.4 million miles (2.3 million kilometers) from Pan and at a Sun-Pan-spacecraft, or point, angle of 87 degrees. Sculpture range is 9 miles (14 kilometers) per pixel.

Pan creates stripes, called "wakes," in the phone call worry on either side of it. The same as phone call particles nearer to Saturn than Pan move closer in their orbits, these particles convey the moon and bear a gravitational "responsibility" from Pan as they do. This responsibility causes waves to find in the gap and next round the phone call, extending hundreds of kilometers within the necklaces. These waves intersect downstream to commence the wakes, spaces someplace phone call worry has bunched up in an stretch expression dignify to Pan's gravitational responsibility.

The Cassini-Huygens responsibility is a hospitable project of NASA, the European Freedom Headquarters and the Italian Freedom Headquarters. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a divorce of the California Create of Gear in Pasadena, manages the responsibility for NASA's Science Employment Directorate in Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were made-up, modern and assembled at JPL. The imaging gathering is based at the Freedom Science Create, Precious stone, Colo.

Credit: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov