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DOGE eliminates Saturn's Rings ("In reality it all has to do with planetary alignment") [1]
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Date: 2025-03-23
Due to the specific tilts of our planets, on this day Saturn’s rings temporarily disappear from view from Earth.
When I first saw this in headlines, due to the specific tilt of our present reality, I immediately thought the DOGE boys must have eliminated the rings from the budget in order to save the solar system and make it more efficient.
Here is the headline that provoked those thoughts.
Saturn's rings will temporarily 'disappear' this weekend Saturn’s iconic rings will seem to “disappear” for a couple of days starting this weekend — at least from our vantage point on Earth. The rings won’t actually vanish, but for a short time, the angle between Earth and Saturn will create something of a cosmic illusion, making the planet’s rings appear invisible from our point of view.\ **** Occasionally, Saturn’s angle of tilt toward Earth turns the rings precisely edge-on, making it seem like the thin bands are gone. NBC News
From a Nov 2023 article from Smithsonian Magazine:
In reality, it all has to do with planetary alignment. Saturn’s rings are so thin that they seemingly vanish when viewed edge-on. And as Earth and Saturn travel around the sun on their respective orbital paths, our planet reaches this particular vantage point like clockwork, roughly every 13 to 16 years. As Saturn completes its orbit over approximately 29.4 Earth years, it leans at an angle of 26.7 degrees. This means that our view of Saturn toggles between the upper side of its rings when it’s tilted toward us and the lower side when it’s tilted away. We get the special, ringless view of the planet when Earth transitions between each of these perspectives and passes through Saturn’s “ring plane,” essentially, any area of space that’s in line with the edge of its rings. From that angle, “they reflect very little light and are very difficult to see, making them essentially invisible,” Vahe Peroomian, a physicist and astronomer at the University of Southern California, tells CBS News’ Caitlin O’Kane. Smithsonian Magazine
That article has numerous links you may find useful if you want a jumping off point for exploring this subject.
Here’s one link though, at the NASA Hubblesite to a past photograph from May 1995.
For a truly clear view of Saturn “without” its signature rings, skywatchers and scientists will have to wait until 2038 and 2039, which will have three ring plane crossings. And for the best view of the planet alongside its most iconic feature, observers can look up in 2032, when Saturn will be tilted 27 degrees away from us, displaying the lower side of its rings at peak visibility. (Smithsonian Magazine link above)
This time we won’t actually be able to see; however, there’s another opportunity later this year.
Unfortunately, however, Saturn will be too close to the sun this weekend for skywatchers to see how it looks without its rings. But another opportunity will come later this year, on Nov. 23, when the rings will be nearly edge-on (though not precisely). NBC News
As for the rings actual disappearance…
“We estimate that this ‘ring rain’ drains an amount of water products that could fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool from Saturn’s rings in half an hour,” said James O’Donoghue of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “From this alone, the entire ring system will be gone in 300 million years, but add to this the Cassini-spacecraft measured ring-material detected falling into Saturn’s equator, and the rings have less than 100 million years to live. This is relatively short, compared to Saturn’s age of over 4 billion years.” O’Donoghue is lead author of a study on Saturn’s ring rain appearing in Icarus December 17. NASA
I live in Los Angeles where our brash light obscures all but only the occasional view of Saturn, although I was able to see it as a bright light a few years back. (Jupiter, Mars, and Venus are often visible.)
Have you seen the rings?
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