Is Saturn Making a New Moon?

[Crisp]

Is Saturn Making a New Moon?

 

A 750-mile (1,200-km) -long feature spotted on Saturn?s A ring by Cassini on April 15, 2013

 

Congratulations! It?s a baby? moon? A bright clump spotted orbiting Saturn at the outermost edge of its A ring may be a brand new moon in the process of being born, according to research recently published in the journal Icarus.

?We have not seen anything like this before,? said Carl Murray of Queen Mary University in London, lead author of the paper. ?We may be looking at the act of birth, where this object is just leaving the rings and heading off to be a moon in its own right.?

In images acquired with Cassini?s narrow-angle camera in 2013, a 1,200-kilometer-long, 10-kilometer-wide arc of icy material was observed traveling along the edge of the A ring. The arc is thought to be the result of gravitational perturbations caused by an as-yet unseen embedded object about a kilometer wide ? possibly a miniature moon in the process of formation.

 

The half-mile-wide object has been unofficially named ?Peggy,? after lead author Murray?s mother-in-law (whose 80th birthday it was on the day he was studying the Cassini NAC images.) Murray first announced the findings on Dec. 10, 2013 at the AGU 13 meeting in San Francisco.

 

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[ShadowMajestic]

Awesome, we kinda 'know' how it happens, but now we might have a chance to observe it happening.

[streetw0lf]

Wonder who the father is?

[Decebalvs Rex]

What if "Peggy" turns onwards Terra due to collisions and violent manner of birth?

[spacer]

This news is pretty cool. I wonder if we can send another probe to Saturn that will continually monitor this little moon. It would be amazing to get close-up, detailed images of this proto-moon coming together. (even though it is going to take thousands of years)

[Hum]

That's just the Mothership hiding, before the Invasion.