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Old 06-March-2008, 08:49 PM
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Default Rings around...Rhea?

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PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found evidence of material orbiting Rhea, Saturn's second largest moon. This is the first time rings may have been found around a moon.

A broad debris disk and at least one ring appear to have been detected by a suite of six instruments on Cassini specifically designed to study the atmospheres and particles around Saturn and its moons.

...
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/pres...cfm?newsID=820
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Old 06-March-2008, 11:50 PM
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A Frequently Asked Question in this forum is whether or not a moon can have a moon. If this discovery is true, it would be the first known example of a natural satellite of a moon.
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Old 06-March-2008, 11:55 PM
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A Frequently Asked Question in this forum is whether or not a moon can have a moon. If this discovery is true, it would be the first known example of a natural satellite of a moon.
A ring is not a "natural satellite"!
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Old 07-March-2008, 12:18 AM
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no, its trillions of them!
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Old 07-March-2008, 02:17 AM
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Originally Posted by tony873004 View Post
A Frequently Asked Question in this forum is whether or not a moon can have a moon. If this discovery is true, it would be the first known example of a natural satellite of a moon.
If an asteroid can pull it off, a moon is a shoe in.
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Old 07-March-2008, 04:35 AM
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If an asteroid can pull it off, a moon is a shoe in.
Not quite the same situation, as a free asteroid is subject to very little tide to pull its moonlets off course. Now we actually know that the destabilizing effect is not sufficient in Rhea's case to knock the moons out of orbit, at least not for a while.
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Old 07-March-2008, 08:31 AM
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More, from CNN.

Saturn has rings and is in orbit around a much more massive body (the sun). Why shouldn't it's moon enjoy the same?

By the way, there is quite a bit of debris at our own Moon's Langrangian points (mainly L4 and L5). Several thousand asteroids (the Trojan asteroids) are in orbit around the Sun-Jupiter L4/L5 points. (from Wiki): "The Saturnian moon Tethys has two smaller moons in its L4 and L5 points, Telesto and Calypso. The Saturnian moon Dione also has two Lagrangian co-orbitals, Helene at its L4 point and Polydeuces at L5."

Most of you probably know this.

But how many of you knew that Earth has a co-orbital partner with whom it exchanges orbits on a regular basis?

3753 Cruithne is an asteroid that regularly swaps orbits with our planet.

Neat, huh? That astronomical science keeps coming up with the unexpected? It keeps me interested, anyway!
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Old 07-March-2008, 02:41 PM
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...
But how many of you knew that Earth has a co-orbital partner with whom it exchanges orbits on a regular basis?

3753 Cruithne is an asteroid that regularly swaps orbits with our planet.
Swaps? Exchanges?
I don't get it. From what is in the article, the only thing being exchanged is some of the energy of the orbit, and not the orbit itself.

The energy being the object of the exchange, not the orbit.
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Old 07-March-2008, 02:54 PM
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Saw that headline yesterday. Awesome.

Enceladus stole a bit of limelight from Titan, and now Rhea's in the limelight.

Last edited by Nadme; 07-March-2008 at 02:56 PM. Reason: addition
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Old 07-March-2008, 03:31 PM
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Originally Posted by Kaptain K View Post
A ring is not a "natural satellite"!
And boulders aren´t, either?
(there´s another thread on this Rhea topic)
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Old 07-March-2008, 04:45 PM
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Would it ruin my geek cred if I said my first thought on seeing the title was "how can you put rings around a rhea?"
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Old 07-March-2008, 04:48 PM
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Would it ruin my geek cred if I said my first thought on seeing the title was "how can you put rings around a rhea?"
It could be worse... you could have thought it meant putting a ring on Rhea.
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