Saturn one more moon

1991/11/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Astronomia

Through the 30,000 photographs of Saturn sent by the American Voyager probe in August 1981, discoveries have still been made. The ring of this gigantic planet consists of blocks of dust. Alternately holes appear in this ring.

One of these holes, 320 km long, has given the footprint of the satellite.

Also, because the edges of this hole are undulating, it could be due to the gravitational action of some body with mass. Stanford's Mark Showalr asked his computer about the size and orbit of a satellite to cause the ripple we found. Although in the first attempts it was not successful, finally the computer selected some of these 30,000 photographs, in which you could see a bright spot with a zoom.

This point is called 1981 S13 and has a diameter of approximately 20 km. We know that from now on Saturn has at least eighteen satellites.