That was cheek-y!

If you look carefully, there’s four, maybe five glitches in the middle of the three outermost rings – but are they all caused by the two moons, especially the one closest to the viewer just before the three rings appear to merge?

If you look at the moons themselves, both of them seem to have highly visible craters on their upper bodies, but Epimetheus, (and Pandora, to a degree) appears to have a highly excavated – impact created? – ‘under’ region, adjacent to which is what almost appears to be a mini-me moon, (although viewed in inverted colours it could be a pyramid-esque mountain, but surely that’d be almost as odd?).

http://www.bautforum.com/showthread.php/103799-Measuring-the-days-of-gas-giants?p=1728440#post1728440

EDIT TO ADD :

Yes – Wikipedia check confirms that Cassini began orbiting Saturn in 2004.

Also Voyager II fly past Saturn in 1981 & Voyager I fly by it in 1980.

but I assume that the rotational period is not determined by the cloud movements, right? Any thoughts?

I’m not sure & I could well be wrong – please correct me if I am – but I think cloud patterns *are* actually used along with perhaps magnetic fields to judge the gas giants rotation periods.

Its a good question and pretty hard to work out given these planets are gas and fluid rather than solid bodies.

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that Saturn’s rotation period has actually changed between the time Voyager II last flew past the planet in 1980-83 ish (?) to when Cassini arrived in 2004 ~ish (?) – although maybe it was just a case of a more precise measurement being made. I’ll have to research this further myself now.

You might try asking this question on the BAUT forum too :

http://www.bautforum.com/forumdisplay.php/8-Space-Astronomy-Questions-and-Answers

if you haven’t done so already.

Otherwise, if anybody can explain or elaborate further on this it’d be great.

It’s Greek mythology actualy. Don’t you see the self sarcasm in the myths?