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Monday, November 23, 2009

Photo: "Pinball" Collisions Seen in Saturn Ring


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These two images, taken about eight minutes apart on December 23, 2006, show objects breaking off Saturn's active F ring into dusty clumps.

Boulder-size chunks of material within the bizarre ring called moonlets may collide with other large ring particles on a near-daily basis like a game of pinball, the images suggest.

NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute