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These images, released on 9 June 2009, are from the Cassini Orbiter Imaging website (here for the press release of the photo) and were made by the international-effort Cassini voyager, launched 10 years ago in August. The vertical structures (waves) that we see here in the rings of Saturn are cause dby the gravitational pull of Saturn's 5-mile diameter moon Daphnis, which makes its home in orbit within the Keller Gap in Saturn's outer A ring. The news relsease says that the enormous strucutres--these bumps being beween 500-10,000 feet high--are the result of the gravitational pull of the moon perturbing the ring-edge partciles as it swings by.
The photos are just stunning. They are also the first evidences showing waves in the ring structure. I think that they're simply gorgeous. The little "ball bearing" type figure with the long shadow is Daphnis. The JPL-managed spacecraft has produced remarkable photos throughout its long life--particularly in the cases of Jupiter and Saturn, where in my opinion no sci-fi or speculative artwork has ever come close to depicting the impossible beauty of those two planets as has Cassini.
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