Although NASA and other space agencies have developed tools to look into regions of the universe that are millions of light years awaythe inner courtyard of our Solar System continues with many mysteries to investigate.
The outer planets of our system, which are located in the vicinity of the asteroid belt, hold many astronomical elements to discover.
Recently, the Hubble Space Telescopestill in operation, has recorded a Saturn event that has baffled scientists for decades.
They hope to observe this phenomenon more carefully in order to decipher what is happening in a region of the rings of this gas giant.
What is happening on Saturn? Many years ago (in the 1980s), with the passage of one of the Voyager probes, astronomers picked up radio signals from Saturn. “Is it possible that there is life inside this planet? Are they trying to contact us?” They logically asked themselves at the time.
The technology of the time raised this possibility. Today’s knowledge certifies that there could be no life on that planet. However, they have not been able to decipher what are the behaviors that cause these radio signals in Saturn’s rings.
SATURN’S HEXAGON
At Saturn’s north pole, an immense cloud system has maintained a hexagonal shape for decades, perhaps centuries. It is the Hexagon of Saturn, whose sides measure about 14,500 km in length, with a maximum width of about 30,000 km. pic.twitter.com/BAGwh8Wxb3– Recondito Universe (@UnvrsoRecondito) February 15, 2023
Hubble and the radii of Saturn
according to review The Spanish, just before the autumnal equinox on Saturn these signs begin to appear in the rings. It is complex to study them because each season of this world lasts about seven Earth years due to its immense size.
The Saturnian autumn approaches; It is planned for 2025 and they have already begun to register these signals, thanks to Hubble. They appear most strongly when the rings are tilted towards the Sun and disappear when Satuno’s summer or winter arrives.
So once it gets deeper into the station, NASA wants to take a closer look at them. “Planetary magnetic fields interact with the solar wind, creating an electrically charged environment,” they say from the North American space agency, according to the aforementioned media.
“We think that the smaller dust-sized particles in the ice ring can also become charged, causing them to temporarily levitate above the rest of the larger ice particles and boulders in the rings,” they added.
This new season will provide the space agency with more detailed information on the outer planets of the Solar System, since in 2023 -and the following years- there are more complete tools to observe our inner courtyard of the cosmos.