Saturn's E Ring
Saturn's E Ring
Saturn's wide, diffuse E Ring mainly consists of microscopic silica particles and tiny ice granules of water, carbon dioxide and ammonia that are around one thousandth of a millimetre in size. These particles are smaller than red blood cells, but they can be effortlessly tracked down by the Cosmic Dust Analyzer on the Cassini probe. The E Ring is the second outermost of Saturn's rings, stretching out between the orbits of Mimas and Titan to a distance of almost one million kilometres from the centre of Saturn. Unlike the wafer-thin main rings A to G, the E Ring, with its thickness of 2000 kilometres, resembles more of a torus. The bright point in the image is Enceladus, the cryovolcanoes of which supply the E Ring with small ice particles.
