by The Hubble Space Telescope has captured mysterious features in Saturn’s rings, signaling the start of the planet’s “lightning season”.
Like Earth, Saturn it is tilted on its axis and has four seasons. However, because Saturn is farther out in the solar system and has a much larger orbit around the sun, each season lasts approximately seven Earth years, according to a statement (opens in new tab) from NASA.
When the planet’s rings bend toward the sun, the planet is undergoing a equinox, creating the mysterious lines known as rays, which can be seen in its rings. These rays will become even more prominent as the planet’s northern hemisphere approaches its autumnal equinox on May 6, 2025.
Related: Saturn’s Rings: Composition, Characteristics and Creation
“The suspected culprit for the lightning is the planet’s changing magnetic field. Planetary magnetic fields interact with the solar wind, creating an electrically charged environment,” NASA officials said in the statement. “On Earth, when these charged particles hit the atmosphere, it’s visible in the northern hemisphere as the aurora borealis, or Northern Lights. Scientists think that the smallest dust-sized ice particles may also become charged, which temporarily levitates these particles above the rest of the larger ice particles and boulders in the rings.”
The rays from Saturn’s rings were first observed by NASA’s Voyager mission in the early 1980s. The planet’s last equinox, which occurred in 2009, was observed by the space agency Cassini spacecraft. Now, Hubble is setting its sights on our ringed neighbor as part of a program called the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL).
“Thanks to Hubble’s OPAL program, which is building an archive of data on the solar system’s outer planets, we will have more time dedicated to studying Saturn’s lightning this season than ever before,” Amy Simon, NASA senior planetary scientist and chief of the OPAL program, said in the statement.
The Hubble Space Telescope observations will add a new perspective on Saturn’s mysterious rays, offering visual and spectroscopic data in wavelengths of light from ultraviolet to near-infrared. Combined with archived Cassini observations, the researchers hope to get a more complete picture of the lightning phenomenon and what it reveals about ring physics in general.
“Despite years of excellent Cassini observations, the precise start and duration of the lightning season is still unpredictable, like predicting the first storm during hurricane season,” said Simon.
The rays from Saturn’s rings can appear dark or bright, depending on the lighting and viewing angle. Though visible now, the rays disappear during the planet’s summer or winter solstice, when the sun is at its highest or lowest latitude in the northern or southern hemisphere.
Saturn is the only ringed planet in our solar system where lightning has been observed. However, Saturn’s ring system is much more prominent than the other rings. gas giants in our solar system: Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune.
“It’s a fascinating magic trick of nature that we only see on Saturn – at least for now,” added Simon in the statement.
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