NASA telescope discovers giant ring around Saturn

The Spitzer Space Telescope has discovered the biggest but never-before-seen ring around the planet Saturn, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced late Tuesday.

The thin array of ice and dust particles lies at the far reaches of the Saturnian system and its orbit is tilted 27 degrees from the planet's main ring plane, the laboratory said.

JPL spokeswoman Whitney Clavin said the ring is very diffuse and doesn't reflect much visible light but the infrared Spitzer telescope was able to detect it. Although the ring dust is very cold (minus 316 degrees Fahrenheit) it shines with thermal radiation. No one had looked at its location with an infrared instrument until now, Clavin said. The bulk of the ring material starts about 3.7 million miles from the planet and extends outward about another 7.4 million miles.

The newly found ring is so huge it would take 1 billion Earths to fill it, JPL said. Before the discovery Saturn was known to have seven main rings named A through E and several faint unnamed rings. A paper on the discovery was to be published online Wednesday by the journal Nature.

"This is one supersized ring," said one of the authors, Anne Verbiscer, an astronomer at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville . Her co-authors are Douglas Hamilton of the University of Maryland , College Park , and Michael Skrutskie, also of the University of Virginia .

Saturn's moon Phoebe orbits within the ring and is believed to be the source of the material. The ring also may answer the riddle of another moon, Iapetus, which has a bright side and a very dark side.

The ring circles in the same direction as Phoebe, while Iapetus, the other rings and most of Saturn's other moons go the opposite way. Scientists think material from the outer ring moves inward and slams into Iapetus.

"Astronomers have long suspected that there is a connection between Saturn's outer moon Phoebe and the dark material on Iapetus," said Hamilton . "This new ring provides convincing evidence of that relationship."

The Spitzer mission, launched in 2003, is managed by JPL in Pasadena . Spitzer is 66 million miles from Earth in orbit around the sun.

Source : news.yahoo.com

News From India : Floods displace over 18 lakh people

Flood situation in Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh continues to be grim with over 50 villages in Andhra Pradesh submerged in water following unprecedented flooding of the Krishna River in a century. The death toll in the two states devastated by the unseasonal rains in northern Karnataka and floods downstream crossed the 200 mark.

Flood situation in India 's southern state of Andhra Pradesh improved Monday as water levels receded substantially, state Chief Minister K Rosaiah said.

Rosaiah said the outflow of water in Tungabhadra, Sunkesula, Narayanpur and Jurala projects came down substantially. At 5 pm on Oct 5, the outflows were 1.18 lakh cusecs in Tungabhdara, where the highest in the last five days was 1.96 lakh cusecs.

In Sunkesula, the outflow was 0.75 lakh cusecs, where the highest in five days was 9.80 lakh cusecs. In Srisailam dam, present inflow and outflow were 5.38 lakh cusecs and 10 lakh cusecs.

UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi undertook an aerial survey of the ravaged areas in Bellary district and Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappa, who accompanied her, said the state suffered an unprecedented damage exceeding Rs 20,000 crore. Torrential rains left a trail of death and destruction in 15 districts of Karnataka damaging over two lakh houses in 1,467 villages subsided since.

Over 4.53 lakh people have been sheltered in 13,330 relief camps. A 500 m-long bridge across Tungabhadra river, 32 km from Raichur, was washed away in flood waters, officials said.

Some more facts:

The Krishna river experienced the heaviest flood since 1903, when it had 10.30 lakh cusecs of flood waters. About 18 lakh people in nearly 400 villages of Andhra Pradesh have been affected by the floods. Economictimes.com reported that Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh have reported damages of a staggering Rs 32,000 crore following unprecedented floods.

Estimates indicate that over 1.5 lakh hectares of farmland in northern Karnataka are lying submerged, and close to 1.12 lakh hectares are marooned in Kurnool , Guntur , Cuddapah and Mehboobnagar districts in AP. Commodity prices may see a steep hike. The crops worst affected are chilli, cotton, paddy, maize, groundnut, jowar besides pulses like tur.