穿越土星环平面
(原标题: Crossing Saturn's Ring Plane)
2025-11-16
浏览次数: 1523
如果这是土星，光环在哪里？当土星的“附属物”在1612年消失时，伽利略不明白为什么。那个世纪后期，人们了解到土星不寻常的突起是环，当地球穿过环平面时，边缘上的环就会消失。这是因为土星环被限制在一个比剃须刀片薄很多倍的平面上。在现代，从2004年到2017年，围绕土星运行的机器人卡西尼号宇宙飞船在执行土星任务期间经常穿过土星的环面。2005年2月，西班牙业余爱好者费尔南多·加西亚·纳瓦罗从网上大量的卡西尼号原始图像档案中挖掘出一系列飞机穿越的图像。图中所示，经过数字裁剪，并设置了代表性的颜色，是惊人的结果。土星的薄环平面呈蓝色，土星上层大气中的带状和云层呈金色。土星环的细节可以在高高的阴影中看到。土卫四（Dione）和土卫二（Enceladus）是土星环上的凸起。
查看原文解释
If this is Saturn, where are the rings? When Saturn's "appendages" disappeared in 1612, Galileo did not understand why. Later that century, it became understood that Saturn's unusual protrusions were rings and that when the Earth crosses the ring plane, the edge-on rings will appear to disappear. This is because Saturn's rings are confined to a plane many times thinner, in proportion, than a razor blade. In modern times, the robotic Cassini spacecraft that orbited Saturn frequently crossed Saturn's ring plane during its mission to Saturn, from 2004 to 2017. A series of plane crossing images from 2005 February was dug out of the vast online Cassini raw image archive by interested Spanish amateur Fernando Garcia Navarro. Pictured here, digitally cropped and set in representative colors, is the striking result. Saturn's thin ring plane appears in blue, bands and clouds in Saturn's upper atmosphere appear in gold. Details of Saturn's rings can be seen in high dark shadows. The moons Dione and Enceladus appear as bumps in the rings.