This is the happy news from the planetary
scientists for what they have discovered
presence of oxygen in the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Dione.
This operation was carried by an international
team which was led by Los Alamos National Laboratory. According to their report
they say that they discovered ions of molecular
oxygen in upper most atmosphere of Dione which was one among the 62 known moons
orbiting Saturn.They expressed their gratitude to NASA's Cassini spacecraft.
Dione was actually discovered by Giovanni
Cassini ,an astronomer in 1684.The orbits Saturn is approximately same distance
as our own moon orbits Earth.When comes to this tiny moon it is a mere 700
miles wide and appears to be a thick, pockmarked layer of water ice surrounding
a smaller rock core.
The team says that it orbits Saturn every 2.7
days and Dione is bombarded by charged particles also called ions which are
coming from Saturn's strong magnetosphere.These charged particles come into surface
of Dione which their by displaces oxygen ions in molecular form into Dione's atmosphere through sputtering(a process).From
their oxygen ions in molecular form are stripped from Dione's exosphere by Saturn's
magnetosphere which is very strong.
Previously in 2010 the Cassini Plasma
Spectrometer detected presence of oxygen ions and now it confirmed presence of
oxygen in ringed planet's moon.However Robert Tokar who is the leader of the
team said that the concentration of
oxygen in Dione's atmosphere is not enough to sustain life.
0 comments:
Post a Comment