NASA's Cassini spacecraft has documented the formation of a small icy object within the rings of Saturn that may be a new moon, and may also provide clues to the formation of the planet's known moons.

Images taken with Cassini's narrow angle camera on April 15, 2013, show disturbances at the very edge of Saturn's A ring -- the outermost of the planet's large, bright rings. One of these disturbances is an arc about 20 percent brighter than its surroundings, 750 miles (1,200 kilometers) long and 6 miles (10 kilometers) wide. Scientists also found unusual protuberances in the usually smooth profile at the ring's edge. Scientists believe the arc and protuberances are caused by the gravitational effects of a nearby object. Details of the observations were published online today (April 14, 2014) by the journal Icarus.

The object is not expected to grow any larger, and may even be falling apart. But the process of its formation and outward movement aids in our understanding of how Saturn's icy moons, including the cloud-wrapped Titan and ocean-holding Enceladus, may have formed in more massive rings long ago. It also provides insight into how Earth and other planets in our solar system may have formed and migrated away from our star, the sun.

"We have not seen anything like this before," said Carl Murray of Queen Mary University of London, the report's lead author. "We may be looking at the act of birth, where this object is just leaving the rings and heading off to be a moon in its own right."

The object, informally named Peggy, is too small to be seen in images so far. Scientists estimate it is probably no more than about a half mile (about a kilometer) in diameter. Saturn's icy moons range in size depending on their proximity to the planet -- the farther from the planet, the larger. And many of Saturn's moons are composed primarily of ice, as are the particles that form Saturn's rings. Based on these facts, and other indicators, researchers recently proposed that the icy moons formed from ring particles and then moved outward, away from the planet, merging with other moons on the way.

"Witnessing the possible birth of a tiny moon is an exciting, unexpected event," said Cassini Project Scientist Linda Spilker, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. According to Spilker, Cassini's orbit will move closer to the outer edge of the A ring in late 2016 and provide an opportunity to study Peggy in more detail and perhaps even image it.

It is possible the process of moon formation in Saturn's rings has ended with Peggy, as Saturn's rings now are, in all likelihood, too depleted to make more moons. Because they may not observe this process again, Murray and his colleagues are wringing from the observations all they can learn.

"The theory holds that Saturn long ago had a much more massive ring system capable of giving birth to larger moons," Murray said. "As the moons formed near the edge, they depleted the rings and evolved, so the ones that formed earliest are the largest and the farthest out."

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

To view an image of the Saturn ring disturbance attributed to the new moon, visit: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA18078

For more information about Cassini, visit these sites: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

How many moons these outer planets have they do not know - they really are that clueless.
isn't even the smallest grain technically a planet(oid)..is it small or whopper, or merely a perturbation of nothingness or an errant bit of conglomerate (rubble).

So the article point is there may be a "moon" which may be a few miles in size or is it metres or the pertubations may in fact be down to nothing out of the ordianty

Jolly good article, it is not - perhaps they wrote it in the pub at lunchtime

it would have helped if they defined a moon (and its minimum size) and the size conjecture to exist within the fuzz

I wouldn't give them a Nobel for that just a cuff round the ear

yea, well.. i don't think anyone is standing in line for a Nobel prize here, just more information that is used at a later date... nothing wrong with that, is there?

Very interested suggest book secret of light by walter russell

f
AUTHOR'S
FOREWORD
Jesus said,"GOD IS LIGHT," and no man of that day knew what He meant. The day is now here when all men must know what Jesus meant
when He said "GOD IS LIGHT." For within the secret of Light is vast
knowledge yet unrevealed to man. Light is all there is; it is all we
have to deal with, but we do not yet know what it is.
The purpose of this message is to tell what it is. Today's civilization has advanced far in knowing HOW to deal with matter
but we do not know WHAT matter is nor the WHY of it. Nor do we know what energy, electricity, magnetism, gravitation and radiation are.
Nor do we know the purpose of the inert gases and WHAT they are. Nor do we know the structure of the elemental atoms nor the gyroscopic principle which determines that structure. Nor are we aware of the fact that this is a two-way continuous universe of balance in all effects of motion and not a one-way discontinuous
universe. Nor have we even yet heard of or suspected the most important of all principles in physics, THE VOIDANCE PRINCIPLE and the mirrors and lenses of space which are the cause of illusion in all moving things.

that book is from 1947..

Imagine what we have learned in our own lifetimes.
Nothing compared, to what is out there.

i think it was so Socrates that said "for everything there is to know, i know that i know nothing", meaning we have to start with the idea of our own ignorance first... seems to make sense...

I can ride that wave :-)