Dark straw-like patterns dot the bright outer B ring just left of the
Huygens Gap in the center of this image from the Cassini spacecraft.
Cassini scientists speculate that these features are likely the result of
transient gravitational clumping.
The outer edge of the B ring is anchored and sculpted by a powerful
gravitational resonance with the moon Mimas (396 kilometers, or 246 miles
across). The mutual gravity between particles may pull them into clumps as
they are periodically forced closely together by the action of Mimas. (see
PIA09855 for a closer view).
The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft
narrow-angle camera on Dec. 8, 2008. This view looks toward the
unilluminated side of the rings from about 61 degrees above the ringplane.
Cassini captured this view at a distance of approximately 710,000
kilometers (440,000 miles) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or
phase, angle of 65 degrees. Image scale is 4 kilometers (2 miles) per
pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages
the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The
Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and
assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space
Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team
homepage is at http://ciclops.org.
