A little moon is making waves in Saturn's rings
A new photo taken by a spacecraft near Saturn shows a small moon making waves in the planet's rings.
The photo, captured by the Cassini spacecraft on Jan. 16, reveals the moon Daphnis as it makes its way around the huge world, orbiting within a gap in the planet's distinctive rings.
Cassini was 17,000 miles miles away from Daphnis when it snapped this shot, and according to NASA, it's our closest-ever view of the small world.
"The little moon's gravity raises waves in the edges of the gap in both the horizontal and vertical directions," NASA said in a statement.
In 2009, Cassini caught sight of those waves from a different angle.
While the photo as a whole is striking, scientists can actually learn a lot about Daphnis and its place in space from examining the finer details of the image.
For example, you can see a little wispy wave following behind Daphnis in its orbit. NASA thinks that the structure may have formed when the moon captured some material from Saturn's rings and started trailing it behind itself.
NASA is also learning more about what Daphnis -- which is only about 5 miles wide -- looks like in general thanks to this image.
An apparently, Daphnis looks like a member of Saturn's family.
"Like a couple of Saturn's other small ring moons, Atlas and Pan, Daphnis appears to have a narrow ridge around its equator and a fairly smooth mantle of material on its surface -- likely an accumulation of fine particles from the rings," NASA said.
The little moon has also inspired astrophysicist Katie Mack to create a pretty great meme that lends a little perspective to our place in the universe and on Earth.
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Cassini is almost at the end of its more than 10-year mission exploring Saturn and its 53 known moons.
The spacecraft will make its planned crash into Saturn's atmosphere in September, ending its mission after launching from Earth in 1997.
Miriam Kramer worked as a staff writer for Space.com for about 2.5 years before joining Mashable to cover all things outer space. She took a ride in weightlessness on a zero-gravity flight and watched rockets launch to space from places around the United States. Miriam received her Master's degree in science, health and environmental reporting from New York University in 2012, and she originally hails from Knoxville, Tennessee. Follow Miriam on Twitter at @mirikramer.
