A UVA team of astronomers have discovered a new ring orbiting Saturn. The ring is 13 million kilometers in radius and is the largest planetary ring in the Solar System.
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After four to six weeks of intense work, a team of UVA scientists discovered a new, tenuous ring on Saturn. “The ring is the smoking gun in solving a mystery in planetary science that has existed for more than 300 years,” team leader Anne Verbiscer told C-VILLE. |
“It is extremely large. In terms of the volume of space it occupies, you could fit a billion earths inside of it,” said Anne Verbiscer, leader of the team, in a recorded interview with BBC. Despite its size, the ring was difficult to detect because it is very tenuous, containing only about 20 tiny particles in one cubic kilometer of space. It took four to six weeks of intense work before the team could confirm the existence of the ring.
The Phoebe Ring, named so because it is mostly composed of debris from Saturn’s moon Phoebe, helps explain the appearance of Iapetus, another of Saturn’s moons that is pitch black on one side and bright on the other.
“The ring is the smoking gun in solving a mystery in planetary science that has existed for more than 300 years,” Verbiscer told C-VILLE via e-mail.
Verbiscer has been overwhelmed by the international response to the discovery of the Phoebe Ring, yet also disappointed by the lack of attention in the United States. “It’s a somewhat sad commentary on the importance of science and discovery in America that very few (one!) requests have come from stations in the United States,” said Verbiscer. “I don’t intend to let that fact go unnoticed.”
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