Observations of Saturn's ring system with the Hubble Space Telescope during the 10 August 1995 Earth crossing and the 17 to 21 November 1995 solar crossing indicate that the F ring dominates their apparent edge-on thickness of 1.2 to 1.5 kilometers. The F ring is slightly inclined with respect to the A ring, which may explain the approximately 50-minute difference in apparent crossing times for the east and west ring ansae in August. Prometheus lags its predicted position by about 19 degrees in longitude. The faint G ring is neutral or reddish in color and is confined to a radial range of 2.72 to 2.85 Saturn radii. The broad, distinctly blue E ring flares outward to a maximum thickness of about 15,000 kilometers at 7.5 Saturn radii and appears to have a spatially uniform particle size distribution.
[1] The first set of near-equatorial occultations of the Saturn ionosphere was obtained by the Cassini spacecraft between May and September of 2005. The occultations occurred at near-equatorial latitudes, between 10°N and 10°S, at solar zenith angles from about 84°to 96°. The entry observations correspond to dusk conditions and the exit ones to dawn. An initial look at the data indicates that the average peak densities are lower and the peak altitude higher at dawn than at dusk, possibly the result of ionospheric decay during the night hours. There are also significant differences between individual dawn and dusk occultations; the initial thought is that this variation must be connected to changes in the water inflow into the upper atmosphere and/or variations in the particle impact ionization rates.
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