THE broken body of a former moon turns out to be the source of Saturn’s faint G ring, a mystery since its discovery in 1979.
Lying just beyond the planet’s main set of rings, the G ring has no moon nearby to feed it with debris or stop its dust from dispersing, so its existence has puzzled astronomers. Now images captured by the have revealed a bright arc at the G ring’s inner edge that is thought to consist of remnants of a former moon in chunks up to a metre in diameter (Science, ).
As…
