Casting Shadows on Saturn's Rings

Only yesterday morning, dropping my boy off to school we had "the shadow" discussion, "What is a shadow?" and "Why does it always follow me," he asked as he bounced in and out of my elongated shadowy shape on the ground.

But, the best shadows are currently being made out near Saturn. Various moons of Saturn are orbiting at just the right angle to create shadows on Saturn's rings. Not only can we now get a glimpse of the transit of Saturn's moons, but we can see their elongated shadows on the rings. The camera on Cassini has captured in a series of stills, put together in an animation, the shadow of the small moon Epimetheus, orbiting beyond the rings. You can see it right here.

As the BA blog tells us:

The shadow moves across the rings because Epimetheus’s orbit isn’t precisely aligned with the rings, it’s tilted by less than a degree, but that’s enough to send its stretched-out shadow drifting across the rings like a ghost as the moon bobs above the ring plane.

Evidently, the images are only going to get better right up to August. So, bookmark ciclops.org and stay tuned.

(via BadAstromony.com)