The three bright, finger-like jets of material seen here suggest that a
small object has collided with the core of Saturn's F ring.
Cassini spacecraft imaging scientists have shown that the F-ring shepherd
moon Prometheus influences the structure of the ring in two ways: by
creating streamer-channel features as it closely approaches (and partially
passes into) the ring (see PIA08397) and by perturbing the orbits of small
objects within the F ring region which then exert their own influence on
nearby ring particles, as seen here.
These small, embedded objects could be temporary clumps of particles, but
scientists think at least one of the objects could be a more permanent
moonlet.
This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 40 degrees
below the ringplane. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini
spacecraft narrow-angle camera on Aug. 20, 2008. The view was obtained at
a distance of approximately 685,000 kilometers (426,000 miles) from Saturn
and at a Sun-ring-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 40 degrees. Image scale
is about 5 kilometers (3 miles) per pixel.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European
Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages
the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The
Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and
assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space
Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/. The Cassini imaging team
homepage is at http://ciclops.org.