Daphnis, one of Saturn's ring-embedded moons, might be a small moon for Saturn, but as how poets used to call small things, Daphnis is filled with wonder. With the latest image from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)'s Cassini probe, Daphnis proved to be incredible through a stunning photo of it making waves.
In an article in Space, Daphnis made some impressive waves in the A ring of Saturn's rings. NASA represenatatives described the waves with faint and thin strands of ring material. The said waves were actually influenced by Daphnis' gravity which is hefty despite its size and its location which is inside the Keeler gap of Saturn. As Daphnis motions in the Keeler gap, the moon produces waves along the horizontal and vertical planes.
As described in NASA's official website, the said image of Daphnis creating waves was captured by the Cassini probe. Cassini has a narrow-angle camera which captured the image at a distance of around 28,000 kilometers away from the Daphnis. The scale of the image captured is 168 meters per pixel.
NASA representatives also emphasized that through these images captured by their probes stationed in different planets across the solar system, they were able to know more about the situations in the said planets. Just like in the case of the Cassini probe, it helped NASA's researchers to know how the unique rings and moon of Saturn interact with one another which also present promising data regarding the gravity in Saturn and in each moon.
Just like some of NASA's space exploration projects, the Cassini project was also in partnership of the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency. The Cassini probe was actually launched way back in 1997 and reached the Saturn in 2004. Since then, Cassini has been responsible for delivering several breathtaking images of Saturn including the very recent one for Daphnis.
