New research using the Hubble Space Telescope shows that Saturn's icy rings actually heat up its upper atmosphere.
Saturn’s famous rings don’t just give the planet its distinctive look — they also affect its weather. New research using the Hubble Space Telescope shows that the icy rings actually heat up Saturn’s atmosphere, a phenomenon that could help us learn more about distant exoplanets as well.
Related Videos This heating is thought to be caused by particles from the rings, which are raining down onto the atmosphere due to forces like solar winds or micrometeorites. Over time, the rings are gradually losing particles as they fall into the planet’s atmosphere and heating the hydrogen there — and while scientists already knew about the degrading rings, the heating effect is a new finding.
These indications of ultraviolet emissions had been seen before in observations from Cassini and the two Voyager probes which passed Saturn in the 1980s. But scientists hadn’t been sure whether the effect was real, or just a result of noise. By looking at these data alongside measurements from Hubble, the researchers were able to see the effect was a real one.
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