Saturn's "spoke season" is a fascinating phenomenon that happens on its rings. These spokes are mysterious, dark, radial features that appear on Saturn's rings, resembling the spokes of a wheel. They show up when Saturn's equinox is approaching, which is about every 15 Earth years. Scientists think they might be caused by Saturn's magnetic field interacting with ring particles, but they're still not entirely sure. It's one of those cool space mysteries that keeps astronomers scratching their heads and looking up in awe. Credit:
An Infrared View of Saturn: NASA Hubble - https://flic.kr/p/2e6EEiR, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:An_Infrared_View_of_Saturn.jpg
Inner solar system: Pablo Carlos Budassi, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inner_solar_system_objects_top_view_for_wiki.png
NASA, ESA, STScI, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC)
NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), the OPAL Team, and J. DePasquale
Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Hampton University
Animation is created by Bright Side.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Music by Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com
Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV
Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en
Stock materials (photos, footages and other):
https://www.depositphotos.com
https://www.shutterstock.com
https://www.eastnews.ru
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more videos and articles visit:
http://www.brightside.me
An Infrared View of Saturn: NASA Hubble - https://flic.kr/p/2e6EEiR, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:An_Infrared_View_of_Saturn.jpg
Inner solar system: Pablo Carlos Budassi, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Inner_solar_system_objects_top_view_for_wiki.png
NASA, ESA, STScI, Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC)
NASA, ESA, A. Simon (Goddard Space Flight Center), M.H. Wong (University of California, Berkeley), the OPAL Team, and J. DePasquale
Amy Simon (NASA-GSFC), Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI/Hampton University
Animation is created by Bright Side.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Music by Epidemic Sound https://www.epidemicsound.com
Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV
Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Our Social Media:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightside
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en
Stock materials (photos, footages and other):
https://www.depositphotos.com
https://www.shutterstock.com
https://www.eastnews.ru
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
For more videos and articles visit:
http://www.brightside.me
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00Attention, attention!
00:02Something very exciting is going on on Saturn!
00:05It's called a spoke season, and no, the planet isn't turning into a giant gaseous
00:10wheel.
00:11Let me tell you more about this phenomenon.
00:15Each year, NASA's Hubble Space Telescope devotes some of its time to observing Saturn,
00:20a gas giant, like me, the second-largest planet in the Solar System.
00:25And this space body always has something new to surprise us with.
00:29For example, look at one of the latest images of the gas giant.
00:32See those smudgy spokes?
00:34They mean that Saturn's spoke season is starting.
00:37Like our planet, Saturn is tilted on its axis.
00:40That's why it has four seasons.
00:43But since the orbit of the gas giant is much larger, each of these seasons lasts about
00:47seven Earth years.
00:49Keep this in mind, it's important!
00:51Now the next thing we need to talk about to understand the concept of the unique spoke
00:56season on Saturn is the equinox.
00:59On Earth, it's the moment when the Sun is exactly above the equator of the planet,
01:04and day and night are of the same length.
01:06But on Saturn, it's something a bit different.
01:09An equinox occurs when Saturn's rings are tilted edge-on to the Sun.
01:14And even though equinoxes on Saturn happen every spring and fall, just like on our planet,
01:19they actually occur very seldom.
01:21Roughly once in 15 Earth years.
01:24That's why astronomers are so excited about this event.
01:27Now look, there are two smudgy spokes in this ring.
01:30It's called ring B, on the left of the picture.
01:33They resemble the spokes on a bicycle.
01:36The shading and shape of spokes vary.
01:38They may seem dark or light, it depends on the angle and illumination.
01:43Sometimes they might look like blobs instead of something with a classical radial spoke
01:47shape.
01:48They also don't last long, but more and more will start to appear the closer we're
01:53to May 6, 2025.
01:55That's when the autumnal equinox on Saturn will occur.
01:59But what causes the spokes?
02:01Astronomers think it might be the gas giant's magnetic field.
02:04When a planetary magnetic field interacts with the solar wind, it creates an electrically
02:09charged environment.
02:11On Earth, this results in northern lights, also called aurora borealis.
02:16And if we speak about Saturn, the tiniest icy ring particles might get charged too.
02:21And it probably temporarily levitates these particles above the larger boulders the rings
02:26consist of.
02:27For the first time, the spokes in Saturn's rings were spotted by NASA's Voyager mission.
02:33It happened in the early 1980s.
02:35At the time, we didn't know that these spokes were a seasonal phenomenon.
02:40Voyager 2 just passed by the planet and then sped on.
02:43To figure out what these spokes were and how they functioned, astronomers needed a space
02:48telescope that could observe Saturn's rings from afar.
02:52Like Hubble.
02:53The latest equinox on Saturn occurred in 2009.
02:57At that time, NASA's Cassini space probe was traveling around the gas giant.
03:02It sent many amazing images back to Earth.
03:05It quickly proved that the spokes weren't caused by gravitational interactions with
03:09Saturn or the influence of the gas giant's moons or small moonlets, which make up the
03:14planet's rings.
03:15It was the year 2005 when Cassini confirmed that the spokes were related to Saturn's
03:21magnetic field.
03:22That mission was finished in 2017.
03:25Now Hubble keeps its long-term monitoring of the changes on and around Saturn.
03:30Despite all the observations, astronomers still can't predict the beginning and duration
03:35of the spoke season.
03:36Luckily, Saturn's prominent rings are a perfect laboratory for studying this phenomenon.
03:42Because even though other gas giants in the Solar System also have rings, those are not
03:47so visible, and scientists don't know whether spokes occur on those planets.
03:52But these spokes aren't the only exciting space phenomenon.
03:55Our Solar System is a fascinating place, that's why.
03:59If you were standing at the Martian equator barefoot, your feet wouldn't get cold.
04:04The temperature there would feel like on a sunny spring day on Earth.
04:07But you'd have to wear a hat.
04:09At the height of your head, it would be freezing cold.
04:13Venus spins backward, compared to most other planets in the Solar System and the Sun itself.
04:18One of the explanations astronomers have come up with is a collision with some solid object,
04:23for example, an asteroid, that happened in the past.
04:27Jupiter's moon Io has hundreds of volcanoes, which makes the satellite the most volcanically
04:33active object in the Solar System.
04:35The moon also has a weird yellowish surface.
04:38It looks blotted and resembles a pepperoni pizza.
04:41Yum!
04:42Europa, one of Jupiter's four biggest moons, is covered in ice.
04:47This ice shell can be 10-15 miles thick.
04:50It also has some smooth patches, so if you're into ice skating, you'd like it there.
04:56If you lump together all the known asteroids in the Solar System, their total weight would
05:00still be smaller than 10% of the mass of our moon.
05:05Scientists believe that Mercury might still have a partially molten core.
05:10It could explain why Mercury has a magnetic field, even if it's just 1% as strong as
05:15Earth's.
05:16Mercury's core takes up around 42% of the planet's volume.
05:20Mercury also has wrinkles.
05:22When its iron core was cooling, the planet's crust contracted.
05:26It made the surface of the planet uneven.
05:29These wrinkles are called lobate scarps.
05:32The biggest of these scarps can be hundreds of miles long and up to a mile high.
05:38Uranus is the only planet in the Solar System to rotate on its side.
05:43The reason might be an ancient mega-powerful collision with an Earth-sized object.
05:48But so far, it's just a theory.
05:50Mars might get a set of rings of its own in the next 70 million years.
05:55Its largest moon, called Phobos, is orbiting closer and closer to the planet.
06:00One day, it's likely to get broken apart by the gravitational pull of the Red Planet
06:05and turn into a ring that can last for millions of years.
06:08I won't be around then, so I'll just take their word for it.
06:12Scientists think that the moon's surface has more craters than Earth's because it
06:16doesn't have so much natural activity going on.
06:19Winds, rains, earthquakes, and erosion keep altering the surface of our planet.
06:24But the moon has almost no weather to change its appearance.
06:28Saturn is the most flattened planet in the Solar System.
06:31It's squished at the poles, and any point on the equator is about 4,000 miles farther
06:37from the center of the planet than the poles.
06:39The Hubble Space Telescope weighs almost as much as two male African elephants and is
06:44as long as a big school bus.
06:46Yeah, that's a launch I'd love to see – two elephants in a school bus!
06:50It's made almost 1.5 million observations since it was launched in 1990.
06:56Astronomers have used this data to write about 15,000 scientific papers.
07:02Everything on Earth and everything people can see in space with the help of telescopes
07:06is normal matter.
07:07It's made up of atoms and molecules and adds up to less than 5% of the Universe.
07:13Almost 68% of the Universe is dark energy, and the remaining 27% is dark matter.
07:20Does that really matter?
07:22As a matter of fact, it does.
07:24Saturn has a mysterious vortex swirling over the planet's south pole.
07:29The whole thing resembles an enormous hurricane-like storm, measuring almost 5,000 miles across.
07:35That's two-thirds the diameter of Earth.
07:38What confuses astronomers is that, although the phenomenon looks like a hurricane, it
07:42doesn't behave like one.
07:45Saturn is also the only planet in the Solar System that's less dense than water.
07:49In other words, if you found a bathtub huge enough to fit this gas giant, it would float
07:54there like a rubber duck.
07:57Earthquakes on the Moon don't occur as often as on our planet.
08:00But when they do, it happens closer to the center of the satellite.
08:05Scientists think moonquakes might be caused by the gravity of Earth and the Sun.
08:10One of Saturn's moons, Iapetus, has bizarre two-tone coloring.
08:15The difference between the moon's two hemispheres is great.
08:18One of them is light, and the other is eerily dark.
08:22Scientists haven't figured out this mystery yet.
08:25The only asteroid belt in the Solar System astronauts know about is between Mars and
08:30Jupiter.
08:31There are thousands of asteroids in this area.
08:33They're irregularly shaped solid objects of different sizes, but all of them are way
08:38smaller than a planet.
08:41Scientists have analyzed the chemical content of some meteorites found in the Sahara Desert,
08:45Antarctica, and other places.
08:48Some of the rocks turned out to have a Martian origin.
08:51Others arrived from the moon or the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
08:55Ooh, space rocks.
08:57So we can also say, space rocks.
08:59Yeah, we could say that.
09:02That's it for today!
09:03So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your
09:08friends!
09:09Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!