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takyon [soylentnews.org] writes:

Saturn's rings mess with the gas giant's atmosphere [sciencenews.org]

Saturn's mighty rings cast a long shadow on the gas giant — and not just in visible light.

Final observations from the Cassini spacecraft show that the rings block the sunlight that charges particles in Saturn's atmosphere. The rings may even be raining charged water particles onto the planet, researchers report online December 11 in Science [sciencemag.org] [DOI: 10.1126/science.aao4134] [DX [doi.org]] and at the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union [confex.com].

[...] Jan-Erik Wahlund of the Swedish Institute of Space Physics in Uppsala and Ann Persoon of the University of Iowa in Iowa City and their colleagues examined data from 11 of Cassini's dives through the rings. The researchers found a lower density of charged particles in the regions associated with the ring shadows than elsewhere in the ionosphere. That finding suggests the rings block ultraviolet light, the team concludes.

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