• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

You Will Soon Get A Chance To See Saturn Without Its Glorious Rings

September 3, 2024 by Deborah Bloomfield

Saturn is one of the nicer objects to gawp at when you have access to a telescope or binoculars, being large enough to get a good look at, and having a pleasing ring structure around it. In early 2025, you will get a chance to have an even more unusual view: Saturn, without its rings obscuring it. 

Advertisement

Saturn will not have its distinctive rings forever. When NASA’s Voyager probe first flew past the gas giant, scientists learned that the ice, dust, and rock making up the rings is slowly falling towards the planet. Estimating how much time they have left, one study suggested they may have as little as 300 million years before they are gone completely.

“We are lucky to be around to see Saturn’s ring system, which appears to be in the middle of its lifetime,”  James O’Donoghue of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center explained in a statement. “However, if rings are temporary, perhaps we just missed out on seeing giant ring systems of Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune, which have only thin ringlets today.”



In 2025, you will get a sort of preview of that far-distant future, when the gas giant’s rings are side-on, from Earth’s perspective.

“Just like Earth, Saturn experiences seasons, but more than 29 times longer than ours. Where Earth’s equator is tilted by 23.5 degrees, Saturn’s equator has a 26.7 degree tilt,” Jonti Horner, Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Southern Queensland, explained in an article for The Conversation. “The result? As Saturn moves through its 29.4-year orbit around our star, it also appears to nod up and down as seen from both Earth and the Sun.”

Advertisement

While the rings spread out over a huge distance of about 280,000 kilometers (174,000 miles), they are incredibly thin, measuring just tens of meters thick. The result is that from Earth, we can see the rings clearly from our vantage point most of the time. But when Saturn is at just the right angle from Earth that the rings are side on, they “disappear” from our viewpoint. 

This view happens every 13.7 to 15.7 years, with the next side-on view taking place on March 23, 2025. After that, we will begin to see the underside of Saturn’s rings and its south pole, another view we have not had for many years.

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. China will buy 8,700 new airplanes over next 20 years – Boeing
  2. Toyota’s Woven Planet acquires vehicle operating system developer Renovo Motors
  3. Jerusalem Syndrome: The Unusual Psychiatric Condition Affecting Visitors To The “Holy City”
  4. Eta Aquariids Are Striking Through The Sky This Month – Here’s When The Shower Peaks

Source Link: You Will Soon Get A Chance To See Saturn Without Its Glorious Rings

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • IFLScience The Big Questions: How Do Black Holes Shape The Universe?
  • North America’s Smallest Turtle Is The Cutest Thing You’ll Find In A Bog
  • “Unambiguous Signal” To Curb Emissions Now: Long-Lost Aerial Photos Reveal Evolution Of Antarctic Ice Shelf Collapse
  • 8 Children Have Been Born With 3 Biological Parents Each After Mitochondrial Transfer
  • First Known Observations Of Matter-Antimatter Asymmetry In Special Particle Decay
  • In 1973, NASA Sent Two Spiders Into Space To See If They Can Spin Webs – And They Learnt A Lot
  • Meet The Many Species Of Freaky Looking “Assassin Spiders” That Only Eat Other Spiders
  • Your Dog’s TV Preferences Might Reveal Their Personality
  • Some Human Gut Bacteria Can Absorb Harmful Toxic “Forever Chemicals” So They Can Be Pooped Out
  • You Could Float Through 10 Countries Before The World’s Most International River Spat You Out
  • Enormous Coronal Hole And Beast-Like Crawling Prominences Dazzle On The Active Sun
  • Dramatic Drone Footage Of Iceland’s Latest Volcanic Eruption Shows An Epic Scene From Hell
  • A Shrimp That Lives In A Tree? Indonesia’s Cyclops Mountains Are Home To Some Seriously Strange Wildlife
  • Is NASA’s Claim That Saturn Could Float On Water Really True?
  • Pangea Proxima: This Is What Planet Earth May Look Like 250 Million Years In The Future
  • The Story Of Dogxim, The Fox-Dog Hybrid That Shouldn’t Have Existed
  • Neanderthal Butchers From Different Caves Had Their Own Specialities
  • On July 20, The US And Canada Will Witness The Little-Known Seven Sisters Eclipse
  • First-Ever Giant Ichthyosaur Soft Tissues Preserved In “Extraordinary Fossil” Dating Back 183 Million Years
  • The Worst Day In History For Humans
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version