Over the course of a year, using observations of Saturn from the Hubble Space Telescope, data from the Voyager 1 spacecraft,
The main evidence of heating is excessultraviolet radiation observed as a spectral line of hot hydrogen in Saturn's atmosphere. A burst of radiation means that something from the outside is polluting and heating the upper atmosphere.
The most plausible explanation is thatthat this heating is caused by particles of ice rings that fall on the atmosphere of Saturn. This may be due to the impact of micrometeorites, bombardment by solar wind particles, solar ultraviolet radiation, or electromagnetic forces that collect electrically charged dust. All this happens under the influence of the gravitational field of Saturn, which draws particles into the planet. When NASA's Cassini probe plunged into the gas giant's atmosphere at the end of its mission in 2017, it measured the composition of the atmosphere. His data confirmed that many particles fall out of Saturn's rings.
“Although the slow decay of rings is well known, itthe impact on the planet's atomic hydrogen is a surprise. The Cassini probe provided information about Saturn's rings. However, we did not know anything about the content of atomic hydrogen, ”concludes Lotfi Ben-Jaffel from the Institute of Astrophysics in Paris and the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory of the University of Arizona, author of an article published in the Planetary Science Journal.
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Cover photo: NASA, ESA, Lotfi Ben-Jaffel (IAP & LPL)