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Stunning close-up of Saturn’s moon, Pan, reveals a space empanada


Batu69

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pan4_16x9.jpg?itok=Qk1JkalA

 

Astronomers have long known that Pan, one of Saturn’s innermost moons, has an odd look. Based on images taken from a distance, researchers have said it looks like a walnut or a flying saucer. But now, NASA’s Cassini probe has delivered stunning close-ups of the 35-kilometer-wide icy moon, and it might be better called a pan-fried dumpling or an empanada.

 

Pan orbits Saturn in a gap in the planet’s rings and pulls material from them, so the ridge around it likely started accumulating soon after the moon formed, researchers say. The new images are only hours old, so scientists haven’t yet had time to estimate how wide and tall the ridge is. If material in the ridge is still loose, rather than somehow fused together, the ridge can maintain its steepness only because the moon’s gravity is so low.

 

The latest pictures were obtained as Cassini conducts its final (and riskiest) flybys past Saturn’s moons and rings before it blazes into the planet’s atmosphere later this year.

 

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Saturn will still be there after the sun has become a white dwarf, in 4-5 billion years time (after having burned as a red giant for about 250 million years). Because of the mass of Saturn and the heath from tidal working, its bigger moons could possibly become a place for life to stay later. We should in any case move to 'somewhere' sooner. Earth will only be able to support life in the range from from 500 million to 2.3 billion years from now.

Where could humans survive in our solar system?

Habitable Worlds? New Kepler Planetary Systems in images.

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