A stunning photo of Saturn from the orbiting Cassini spacecraft reveals a large, bright smudge on the planet's outermost ring, suggesting interference from a passing object.
The photo is among those taken by NASA's Cassini orbiter this past April. The mark crossing Saturn's skinny F-ring looks almost like a smear of ink left behind by a faulty office printer, but this giant smudge was no mechanical error. Instead, the affected ring appears to reveal disturbance from some object out in space.
Though Saturn's moon Pandora is visible nearby in the new portrait, the satellite probably didn't cause the disruption to Saturn's ring. Instead, a small object that resides inside of the ring probably created the disturbance, NASA officials said in a statement.
When a small body interacts with material inside of Saturn's rings, the result is a bright smudge like this one. The smudges are called jets, and the bodies that cause them are too tiny for cameras like the one on Cassini to see, especially at a distance of 1.4 million miles away. However, the disruptions caused by the jets are easily viewable. (This isn't the first time Cassini has spotted disruptions in Saturn's F-ring).
This image was taken by Cassini from the sun-facing side of Saturn, so natural light provided a clear view of the planet, its many rings and the jet.
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