BOULDER, Colo., Sept. 17 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists on the Cassini imaging team are celebrating their first Cassini sighting of spokes, the ghostly radial markings discovered in Saturn's rings.
NASA's Voyager spacecraft spotted the spokes 25 years ago, but a sequence of images taken on the unilluminated side of the rings has captured a few faint, narrow spokes in the outer B ring -- measuring about 2,200 miles by 60 miles. The images show the spokes as they march into the shadow of the planet on the rings due to their orbital motion.
Dr. Carolyn Porco -- Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., and one of the first individuals to study spokes in Voyager images -- was attending the Division of Planetary Sciences meeting in Cambridge, England, when she was informed of the discovery by her staff members.
"This is really a joy, and very unexpected," she said.
