Saturn’s rings change according to the season

The planets of the solar system have many peculiarities that make them specialalthough others could share some characteristics, such as the case of Saturn, which _like the Earth_ is tilted on its axis and, therefore, has four seasons.

In any case, due to Saturn’s much larger orbit, each season lasts approximately seven Earth years. The equinox occurs when the rings are tilted edge-on towards the Sun.

Saturn is the sixth planet from our Sun and orbits at a distance of approximately 1.4 billion kilometers from the Sun. It takes about 29 Earth years to orbit the Sun, which makes each season on Saturn more than seven Earth years old.

Now, new images of Saturn taken by the Hubble Space Telescope herald the beginning of the “lightning season” around its equinox when enigmatic flashes appear in their rings.

The cause of lightning, as well as its seasonal variability, has not yet been fully explained by planetary scientistsindicates Europe Press.

The rays disappear as the summer or winter solstice approaches Saturn. (When the Sun appears to reach its highest or lowest latitude in the northern or southern hemisphere of a planet.) As the autumnal equinox of Saturn’s northern hemisphere approaches, on May 6, 2025, lightning is expected to become increasingly prominent and observable.

The presumed culprit for the lightning strikes is the planet’s variable magnetic field. Planetary magnetic fields interact with the solar wind, creating an electrically charged environment (on Earth, when those charged particles hit the atmosphere, this is visible in the northern hemisphere as aurora borealis). Scientists believe that smaller icy particles, about the size of dust, can also become charged, which causes them to temporarily levitate above the rest of the larger icy particles and the rocks of the rings.

Ring rays were first observed by NASA’s Voyager mission in the early 1980s. These mysterious transitory features can appear dark or light depending on lighting and viewing angles.

“Thanks to Hubble’s OPAL program, which is building a data archive on the outer planets of the solar system, This season we will have more time than ever to study Saturn’s rayssaid planetary scientist Amy Simon, head of Hubble’s OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy) program, in a statement.

Saturn’s last equinox occurred in 2009, as NASA’s Cassini spacecraft orbited the gas giant planet to reconnoitre it up close. With the Cassini mission completed in 2017, and Voyager spacecraft long since in interstellar space, Hubble continues the long-term work of monitoring changes to Saturn and the other outer planets.

“Despite years of excellent observations from the Cassini mission, the precise start and duration of the lightning season remains unpredictable.sort of like predicting the first storm during hurricane season,” Simon said.

Although the other three gas giant planets in our solar system also have ring systems, nothing compares to Saturn’s prominent rings, making them a laboratory for studying lightning phenomena. At the moment it is unknown if the rays could be produced or are produced on other ringed planets. “This is a fascinating magic trick of nature that we only see on Saturn, at least for now,” says Simon.

Hubble’s OPAL program will add visual and spectroscopic data, in wavelengths from ultraviolet to near-infrared, to Cassini’s archive of observations. Scientists envision putting these pieces together to get a more complete picture of the radium phenomenon and what it reveals about ring physics in general. (YO)