Saturn’s rings – Photo: New York Times
Experts of the American Space Agency (NASA) say that Saturn revolves around the Sun in a cycle of about 29.5 years. Throughout the cycle, the angle of inclination of Saturn’s rings relative to Earth will also change.
Currently, the angle of inclination between Saturn’s rings and Earth is estimated to be 9.hey, This inclination angle will continue to become smaller, until by 2024 it will be only 3.7hey,
This angle will be almost zero by 2025heyWhich means that the rings of Earth and Saturn appear to be aligned.
The problem is that although the massive structure of Saturn’s rings extends from 70,000 to 140,000 km, their thickness is only about 10 meters, which is very “thin” in space.
Combined with the distance of up to 1.2 billion km between Earth and Saturn, during the time when the belts of Saturn and Earth are almost aligned, it will be very difficult for you to observe this belt when viewed from the ground. The belts appear to “disappear” when viewed from the front.
Then, of course, as the planet continued to rotate, the angle of inclination between Saturn’s rings and Earth gradually increased again.
The time when Saturn’s belts will “disappear” in 2025 is not the first time this has happened. More recently, similar incidents occurred in 2009 and 1996. The next similar event occurred in 2038.
During that time, although Saturn’s belt stars were difficult to see, scientists had favorable views of many of Saturn’s moons.
Could Saturn’s rings really disappear?
From data collected by the Saturn probe from 2004 to 2017, NASA scientist Paul Estrada believes that the dust particles in Saturn’s rings are becoming less abundant.
Saturn’s orbital rings are composed primarily of ice and a small percentage of rocky dust that forms in space from collisions between asteroid fragments and micrometeoroids.
From 2004 to 2017, the dust particles collected from Saturn by the Cassini probe became fewer and fewer. At that rate, Mr. Paul Estrada estimates that Saturn’s rings may still exist for several hundred million years. In astronomy this time period is not considered very long.
(tagstotranslate)saturn
