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Tracking Saturn's Moons
| Title |
Tracking Saturn's Moons |
| Explanation |
These five pairs of Hubble Space Telescope images [ http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/96/18/B.html ] track some of Saturn's moons as they orbit the ringed planet [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/lib/saturn.html ]. A pair of images was taken every 97 minutes on November 21, 1995 with the Wide Field Planetary Camera-2 [ http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/sespd/astro.html ], the normally bright ring system appearing nearly edge-on. In the top pair, the large bright moon Dione [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951009.html ] hangs above center while the smaller moons Pandora, Prometheus [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951223.html ], and Mimas [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap950924.html ] (top right image) appear near the planet's disk close to the outer ring. By the second and third pair of images, moons Rhea [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap951014.html ] and Epimetheus have joined the dance. During the Saturn ring plane crossings [ http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap950801.html ], the reduction in light from the edge-on rings provided an opportunity for astronomer's to explore Saturn's complex moon system and search for elusive undiscovered satellites [ http://www.stsci.edu/pubinfo/PR/95/29.html ]. |
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