
Astronomie
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Recall the F ring of Saturn ... a solitary ring of icy debris, lying outside Saturn's main rings, that first came into view during the historic Voyager flybys of Saturn in the early 1980s. Voyager found a bright ring, shepherded into a tight orbital corridor by two of Saturn's moons, Prometheus and Pandora, the so-called `shepherd moons'. The dynamical influence of these moons explained for the most part the F ring's narrowness. But it was the complexity of this ring that baffled: isolated bright clumps, individual strands, braided regions, kinky segments all seemed at the time to be inexplicable. It was strongly suspected, however, that the ring's special location plays a major role: ie, it lies at a distance from Saturn where the planet's shearing tidal forces, still present here but weakening, are offered stiff competition by the coalescence-encouraging gravitational attraction among ring particles.
CICLOPS - Official Source of Cassini images of Saturn, its rings & moons
Par Jean-Baptiste Feldmann, Futura-Sciences Les astronomes amateurs pourront bientôt réaliser des observationsle faire sans quitter leur salon avec Gloria, premier réseau mondial de télescopes robotisés en ligne. Jusqu'à présent toute personne qui désirait admirer le ciel dans un télescope devait l'acheter et apprendre à s'en servir.

