Saturn’s Mysterious rings & Extreme tilt

In News

• Recently, according to a new study, a pre-existing moon named ‘Chrysalis’ likely left Saturn with its bright rings and extreme tilt.
  • Chrysalis likely orbited Saturn for several billion years. Roughly 160 million years ago, Chrysalis became unstable and came too close to its planet. This encounter likely pushed the moon away or destroyed it. 

About the recent research 

• Four planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune and Uranus are known to have rings.
  • Saturn’s rings composed of water ice particles ranging from microns to tens of metres in size are the brightest.
• Tilt: Saturn has a tilt of 26.73 degrees, Earth 23.45 degrees and Jupiter 3 degrees.
  • Saturn is unlikely to have had a tilt during its formation stages, the researchers said.
  • Currently, gas giants Neptune, Uranus and Saturn have a substantial tilt suggesting that this feature did not arise during the formation stages. 
    • Jupiter, also a gas giant, is the only exception.
• Saturn got its tilt due to gravitational interactions with its neighbour Neptune according to a well-known theory.
  • But the new study argues that Saturn is no longer under Neptune’s gravitational influence.
  • Titan, which is Saturn’s largest satellite, may have been responsible, suggested observations from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, which orbited Saturn from 2004-2017.
    • Titan’s fast migration caused the planet to tilt further, reducing Neptune’s gravitational influence on Saturn.

Source: DTE