Dusty Rings in our Solar System

[iceman]

I really enjoyed this podcast from the Keck Observatory podcast page, given by Dr Imke de Pater.

It talks about the formation of rings (dusty and icy) around Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus - and how the edge on ring crossing reveals more clues. There's an upcoming edge on ring crossing of Uranus' rings later this year.

Well worth a listen/read if you like planetary science.

MP3 (http://www.keckobservatory.org/podcast/depater.mp3)
PDF (http://www.keckobservatory.org/podcast/depater.pdf)

Enjoy.

[erick]

Thanks Mike

I enjoyed that presentation as well. I heard it (played in the car), then saw the slides! Pity I didn't do them together!

I wondered about the rings of Jupiter - do amateur astrophotographers ever see evidence of them in images?

Eric

[iceman]

Thanks Eric, I listened to it first and saw the slides later, too. It would've been good to have the notes while listening, but i'm always driving while listening to podcasts so never get the chance to read as well :)

I also wondered about imaging the rings of Jupiter - I think they're most visible in IR and would probably need long exposures and very high resolution (and incredible seeing). I need to find out how far they extend from Jupiter. By exposing Jupiter for so long you might end up washing out the rings. Maybe they're just too small and faint to see.