Cool gravity waves! (Not at all related to gravitational waves except that they both involve gravity) These are caused by the nearby little moon tweaking the orbit of the ring particles
Originally shared by SETI Institute
Daphnis Up Close
The wavemaker moon, Daphnis, is featured in this view, taken as NASA’s Cassini spacecraft made one of its ring-grazing passes over the outer edges of Saturn’s rings on Jan. 16, 2017. This is the closest view of the small moon obtained yet.
Daphnis (5 miles or 8 kilometers across) orbits within the 42-kilometer (26-mile) wide Keeler Gap. Cassini’s viewing angle causes the gap to appear narrower than it actually is, due to foreshortening.
The little moon’s gravity raises waves in the edges of the gap in both the horizontal and vertical directions. Cassini was able to observe the vertical structures in 2009, around the time of Saturn’s equinox.
Like a couple of Saturn’s other small ring moons, Atlas and Pan, Daphnis appears to have a narrow ridge around its equator and a fairly smooth mantle of material on its surface — likely an accumulation of fine particles from the rings. A few craters are obvious at this resolution. An additional ridge can be seen further north that runs parallel to the equatorial band.
Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
Read more: http://buff.ly/2iNcKHC
Very interesting