They are elongated due to their orbital motion during the 600sec exposure. Yet, since first discovered by stellar occultations in 1984, they appear to have persisted. Gravitational resonance effects involving the satellite Galatea in particular have been invoked to explain their long lifetime. These observations of the ring arcs obtained at CFHT indicate that the 'arcs' are near, but not within the resonance with Galatea, in contrast to what is predicted and therefore calling for a revision of the models. The image is 12 arcsec across, with a pixel size of 0.035 arcsec.
North is up and east is to the left.
The Adaptive Optics technique compensates image degradation produced by the Earth's atmosphere. All rights Reserved. CFHT is funded by the Governments of Canada and France, and by the University of Hawaii.