Hey Space Friends! This week I'm geeking
out about moon rings. Not mood rings.
But, moon rings. The interaction between
planetary rings and moons. Specifically
at Saturn. A while back I did a video
about some of my favorite weird moons.
One of those weird moons that I
documented was Pan,
the ravioli moon. Pan is a moon in one of
Saturn's rings that accumulates sort-of a
tutu around it as it goes through the
rings. So, as Pan is flying around Saturn
and picking up stuff in its ring, it
creates this sort-of ravioli-like shape
as a result. There's another tiny moon at
Saturn that has a different interaction
with Saturn's rings.
It's called Daphnis. And Daphnis
creates these beautiful waves in its
wake as it goes around Saturn. So it uses
its tiny amount of gravity for this very
tiny moon and is able to create these
beautiful wave patterns in Saturn's
rings. But today I wanted to geek out
with you specifically about what
Enceladus does with Saturn's rings. A
while back I also made a video about
Enceladus and all the stuff I loved
about it and why it's so... just such a
wonderful moon in our solar system. It's
one of my all-time favorites. But while I
talked about a bunch of really cool
things about Enceladus that you should
definitely go check out, I left out one
really awesome fact. The outer most
visible ring of Saturn?
Enceladus built that. Yeah, built it! Using
its famous plumes from its south pole,
it actually spews out tons and tons of
stuff. And that tons of stuff creates
Saturn's outer most visible ring.
Enceladus actually created it. What
Enceladus is building around Saturn is
actually more akin to a doughnut than a
ring. While a lot of Saturn's rings are
really thin, this is more like a doughnut
of water vapor around Saturn. And this is
because Enceladus is just spewing out so
much stuff from its plumes. It's
estimated that it's actually spewing out
250 kilograms of water vapor every
second at supersonic speeds. Just
thinking about that is a lot. And you can
imagine how Enceladus is able to
actually then build an entire doughnut
ring around the entire
planet of Saturn. Three to five
percent of that water actually ends up
back on Saturn itself. So Saturn has a
little bit of water on it thanks to the
splash overs happening from Enceladus.
Back in the 1980s when Voyager 2 flew by
Saturn, people suspected that maybe
Enceladus was the creator of this
outermost ring. But people weren't really
certain. They saw that Enceladus, this
tiny, tiny, little moon, was in the center
of this ring but they thought, "how could
a tiny moon, so tiny, create this huge
ring around Saturn?". People weren't really
sure and so some people actually
discounted the theory. It wasn't until
Cassini actually then flew by Enceladus
in 2005 and the Cassini Imaging Team was
able to get actual images and
photographic proof of Enceladus caught
in the act creating this ring that it
was then proven that Enceladus does
create this ring of Saturn. This all
really highlights the importance of
using imaging and cameras in science to
actually make scientific discoveries. All
too often and still in some scientific
groups people discount imaging as
something that is just for PR or fun and
not actually useful in aiding for
scientific discoveries or making
scientific discoveries themselves. This
shows that imaging can make scientific
discoveries and really be helpful for
confirming discoveries that people
suspect but aren't yet sure about.
Imaging is so important for science and
I can only hope that in the future more
and more people know the importance of
putting cameras on spacecrafts and other
instruments as they explore our world
and the universe. Okay, that's it for me
this week. I hope you enjoyed. As always
in the YouTube description I will be
putting links that are relevant to this
topic. Also check out the really awesome
patrons that are helping support videos like
this one. If you want to become a really
awesome patron yourself and help support
videos like this, I really appreciate it
and you can head on over to my Patreon
campaign and check that out. I'll see you
all next week and remember to always be
exploring.
