Something strange is happening on Saturn, leaving scientists puzzled.

Something strange is happening on Saturn, leaving scientists puzzled.

The Hubble Space Telescope has made an astonishing discovery: Saturn's iconic rings have been heating the planet's upper atmosphere for a long time, a new study reveals.

This heating effect is something scientists have never observed anywhere else in our solar system. This secret interaction between the gas giant and its rings has been hiding in plain view for 40 years.

Only after analyzing observations of the planet from the Hubble Space Telescope, the retired Cassini probe, and the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft did astronomers uncover it.

This unexpected relationship between Saturn and its rings could become a tool for predicting if exoplanets have magnificent Saturn-like ring systems too.

if you travel to space but apparently there are different kinds of auroras on the gas giant for example one more type is triggered by the charged particles coming from volcanic eruptions on the planet's moons and some of Saturn's auroras might be caused by powerful winds swirling in the planet's own atmosphere these winds blow in the ionosphere which is a region located beneath the magnetosphere the same winds might be responsible for the the variable rotation rate of the planet this phenomenon makes it difficult for scientists to figure out how long one day on the ringed planet lasts speaking of winds Saturn has a mysterious Vortex swirling over the planet's South Pole the whole thing resembles an enormous hurricane-like storm on Earth but its eye alone measures almost 2,500 M across for comparison the eye of a typical terrestrial hurricane is a mere 2 to 3 m wide what confuses astronomers is that although the phenomenon looks like a hurricane it doesn't behave like one it's stationary and keeps spinning over the same area of the South Pole and while polar vortices on earth have cold cores the one on Saturn is warm and now brace yourself for another surprise Saturn has prepared for us in an image sent to Earth by the the Hubble Space Telescope one can notice a couple of dark shadowy spots on the left side of the planet's rings those are informally called spokes maybe because they resemble spokes on a bicycle the shading and shape of spokes vary they may seem dark or light it depends on the angle and illumination sometimes they may even look like blobs rather than something with a classical radial spoke shape they also don't last long but the good news is more and more will start to appear the closer we are to May 6 2025 that's when the amine Equinox on Saturn will occur now on Earth that's the moment when the sun is exactly above the equator of the planet and day and night are of the same length but on Earth it's something a bit different like our planet Saturn is tilted on its axis that's why it has four seasons but since the orbit of the gas giant is much larger each of these Seasons lasts about seven Earth years an equinox occurs when Saturn's rings are tilted Edge on to the Sun but what causes the spokes astronomers think it might be the gas Giant's magnetic field when a planetary magnetic field interacts with the solar wind it creates an electrically charged environment as we already know on Earth this results in Northern Lights also called Aurora bard and if we speak about Saturn the tiniest icy ring particles might get charged too and it probably temporarily levitates these particles above the larger Boulders in the Rings for the first time the spokes in Saturn's rings were spotted by NASA's Voyager Mission it happened in the early 1980s at that time we didn't know that these spokes were a seasonal phenomenon Voyager 2 just passed by the planet after all

and then sped on to figure out what these spokes were and how they functioned astronomers needed a space telescope that could observe Saturn's rings from afar like Hubble the latest Equinox on Saturn occurred in 2009 that's when the Cassini space probe was traveling around the gas giant it sent many amazing images back to Earth it managed to prove quite quickly that the spokes weren't caused by gravitational interactions with Saturn or the influence of the gas giants moons or small moonlets which make up the planet's rings it was the Year 2005 when Cassini confirmed that the spokes were related to Saturn's magnetic field and even though that mission was finished in 2017 now Hubble keeps its long-term monitoring of the changes on and around Saturn despite all the observations astronomers still can't predict the beginning and duration of the spoke season luckily Saturn's prominent rings are a perfect laboratory for St studing this phenomenon because even though other gas giants in the solar system also have rings those are not so visible and scientists don't know whether spokes occur on those planets that's it for today so hey if you pacified your curiosity then give the video a like and share it with your friends or if you want more just click on these videos and stay on the bright side