Pan and Atlas Saturn's Odd Moons
June 8th 2008 07:07
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Saturns's Odd Moons
Once thought to be solid remnants of long-gone, larger celestial bodies, the moons Pan and Atlas may actually be largely composed of dust and debris that has accumulated over millennia, according to new studies.
This new origin theory would explain the moons' "flying saucer" shapes and perhaps shed more light on how Saturn's rings were formed.
Explosive Start
In the early 1980s the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft revealed that several small moons orbit within Saturn`s rings. The discovery lead to speculation that the moons and rings were born of some violent ancient collision, or series of collisions with larger bodies.
Such a impact might have blasted ancient, larger moons or other bodies into smaller fragments, creating the dust-and-debris fields that make up Saturn's rings as we see them now.
The origins of the smaller moons, may not be quite so simple, according to two studies to be published in the journal Science tomorrow one of which Charnoz published.
As Charnoz explained it, larger chunks from the collision may have evolved become moons, while smaller ones became the rocky remnants that make up what look to us like flat rings.
The Cassini spacecraft has found some odd shaped moons orbiting outside the outer ring of Saturn. These are the smallest moonlets found so far . The moonlets look like “ flying –saucers”.
The images were acquired with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera between 2005 and 2007. Pan is 33 kilometers across at its equator and 21 kilometers across at its poles; Atlas is 39 kilometers across at its equator and 18 kilometers across at its poles.
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