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An artist's impression on Satrun's new ring
Saturn was thought to have only seven rings named A through to E and few faint unnamed rings.
NASAS’s new telescope called the Spitzer Space Telescope was able discover a new undiscovered ring by picking up tiny particles of dust and ice using an infrared instrument.
The ring is about 1.5 million miles thick and at a much greater distance than Saturn's other famous rings, making it bigger than any other ring previously studied in the Solar system.
The largest known rings in the solar system was Saturn's E ring.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, published the discovery, said the ring was probably made up of left over particles kicked off Saturn's moon Phoebe by small impacts from passing asteroids.
The telescope was able to pick up very small particles of ring dust, that shine with thermal radiation from the Sun, by using an infrared wavelength.
The ring's orbit is inclined at 27 degrees from the planet's main ring system. The bulk of it starts about 3.7 million miles (6 million km) away from the planet and extends another 7.4 million miles (12 million km).
The question is why did it take scientists so long to discover something so massive?
The ring is made up of ice and dust particles that are spread so far apart that if you happened to flying within this ring, you would be totally unaware you were actually in it.
Well it was bound to happen the urban myths and legends are on the rise despite any evidence to support them.
The newest myth gaining popularity on the internet is the notion that the world will experience a catastrophe on the winter solstice of 2012, either from collision with a (mythical) object called Nibiru sometimes referred to as planet X.
Some believe that planet X or Nibiru orbits beyond the asteroid belt so far there is no evidence that this object exists.
Nibiru a Babylonian term (also transliterated Neberu, Nebiru) is a term in the Akkadian language, translating to "crossing" or "point of transition" this term is referring to rivers or crossing of rivers.
The world is no stranger to these myths there have been many over the centuries.
In 1910 there was world wide concern that the comet Halley would poison the earth.
The comet’s tail did pass the orbit of the earth resulting in multiple meteor showers the earth’s atmosphere was not poised, humans are currently doing a good job of that.
The world will go through lets call it a catastrophe incident in the future after all it is a numbers game. Whether is a natural occurrence or fragment from space the evidence so far presented does not support the 2012 doomsday prediction.
The ancient Sumerians believed Neberu would caused chaos some 4000 years ago. I suspect that’s where the 2010 prediction comes from.
Although no one predicted the near miss in 2009 of asteroid 2009 DD45 this 200 feet wide piece of real estate came visiting at a distance of only 40000miles.
Forty thousand miles may sound like a heck of a lot, the reality is it's only about one-seventh of the way to the moon, and less than twice as far out as many telecommunications satellites.
This rock was a total surprise. These events are not time specific, this type of event could happen at any time anywhere with little warning.
A mysterious comet-like object recently found in images obtained from a ground-based
telescopes might be fine particle debris from a high-speed asteroid collision, according to reports printed in some scientific journals.
The comet like object may contain rock and ice fragments that have sublimated forming a tail like appearance much like any ordinary comet.
P/2010 A2 is the 5th object classed as Main Belt Comet (MBC)
Main Belt Comets do not behave as normal comets, MBC objects orbit within the warmer, inner regions of the asteroid belt.
If this theory is confirmed, the object would represent the first time
astronomers have witnessed the debris of a high speed collision with another object in space.
Dubbed P/2010 A2 (LINEAR), the fuzzy, tailed mystery object is about 130,000
miles (210,000 kilometers) to 190,000 miles (305,000 kilometers) long. The debris looks like a fuzzy comet’s tail, stretching partway across the Solar system in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.
The asteroid belt contains thousands of asteroids of all shapes and sizes. The asteroid belt is about 250 million miles (402 million kilometers) from Earth.
Image James Annis (Fermilab), and David Jewitt (UCLA)
Asteroids and proto-planet's the difference may seem a little confusing since the reclassification of Pluto’s status as a planet has been demoted to dwarf planet. There are a few significant large asteroids orbiting between the orbit of Jupiter and Mars.
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A satellite image of iceberg B17B (top left), some 19 kilometres (12 miles) long, floating in the Ross Sea, near Antarctica. The monster iceberg - nearly twice the size of manhattan island - is drifting towards Australia.
A super iceberg is floating towards the Australian mainland
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The Orion Nebula (also known as Messier 42, M42, or NGC 1976) is a diffuse nebula situated south of Orion's Belt. It is one of the brightest nebulae, and is visible to the naked eye in the night sky.
The Orion Constellation as seen from the southern hemisphere
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Comment by CarlCan
on Saturn's New Ring
Astroearth
"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step."
Lao-tzu, The Way of Lao-tzu
Chinese philosopher (604 BC - 531 BC)