This also applies to the rather flat equator region of the moon Pandora. In all three cases, the bulge is much smoother and has fewer craters than the rest of the surface, suggesting a younger age. While Pan’s bulge accounts for about ten percent of the moon’s total volume, Daphnis’ bulge makes up only one percent and Atlas’ bulge 25 percent of its total volume. More detailed insights into the nature of the ravioli-like bulges were also possible. With spatial resolutions between 36 and 170 meters per pixel, the volume and thus density of the bodies could be determined much more accurately than before. This multi-instrument campaign provides the most accurate picture of the five ring moons to date. During those orbits, LEMMS performed the first detailed and systematic monitoring of the ring moons’ surrounding space environment. A little later the particle detector LEMMS (Low Energy Magnetospheric Measurement System) developed and built by researchers under the leadership of the MPS as part of the MIMI (Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument) instrument package, contributed to the campaign: between April 2017 and September 2017, when Cassini flew its most daring manoeuvres and dived into the area between Saturn and its innermost ring. In six flybys between December 2016 and April 2017, five cameras and spectrometers aboard Cassini were able to collect unprecedented data. The final phases of NASA's Cassini Saturn mission offered the opportunity to study these unique bodies, with diameters ranging between 8 and 120 kilometers, from close-up. Pandora and Epimetheus, both more potato- than ravioli-shaped, orbit Saturn outside the adjacent, much thinner and dustier F-ring. While Pan and Daphnis have cleared orbits for themselves within the A-ring, as is clearly visible even from Earth, Atlas is located at the outermost edge of this ring. Three of the innermost Saturnian moons, Pan, Daphnis, and Atlas, are bizarre worlds: With their ring-like bulge along the equator, they are reminiscent of cosmic ravioli. © NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute Monitoring of the moons’ charged particle environment yielded a surprise: a tightly confined accumulation of high energy electrons that forms a previously unknown micro-radiation belt in the region of the planet’s F ring. Shape, density, surface texture, and composition as well as the distribution of charged particles in the environment allow conclusions about the evolution of the ring moons. The results of these measurements are presented an article published this week in the journal Science by a team of researchers including the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Germany. In the final months of NASA's Cassini mission, the space probe was able to take the most accurate look yet at five of these bizarre, partly ravioli-shaped bodies and the space environment to which they are exposed. Only slightly more than a handful of small, irregularly shaped bodies, so-called ring moons, are an exception. Most of Saturn's 62 moons orbit their giant planet at a great distance outside the main rings.
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