'It's a fascinating magic trick of nature...'
"It's a fascinating magic trick of nature we only see on Saturn — for now at least."Acting UpThe gas giant experiences four seasons, much like our own except seven Earth years in length, thanks to its tilted axis. During the planet's equinox, when its rings tilt edge-on to the Sun, mysterious and fleeting new features appear in its rings called "spokes.
Now, the agency's Hubble Space Telescope has captured images of these strange lines crossing Saturn's rings, heralding the start of the planet's most puzzling transitional period.We still don't know why these mysterious spokes appear, let alone why they're seasonal in nature. "Despite years of excellent observations by the Cassini mission, the precise beginning and duration of the spoke season is still unpredictable, rather like predicting the first storm during hurricane season," said NASA senior planetary scientist Amy Simon in aBut scientists do have an educated guess: the spokes may be the result of changes in Saturn's magnetic fields caused by solar wind.
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