(Photo : REUTERS/NASA/JPL/JHUAPL/HANDOUT) NASA's Cassini spacecraft has documented the formation of small icy object within the rings of Saturn. The new moon has not been directly spotted, but scientists have already given it a nickname: Peggy.
Images taken by a NASA space probe have caught Saturn in the process of adding offspring number 63 to its moon family, Tech Times reported Wednesday.
While there is still no complete, positive identification of the new moon, scientists have already baptized the moonchild with Peggy for a nickname.
"We have not seen anything like this before," said Carl Murray, of Queen Mary University of London.
Murray is the lead author of the report that was published by the journal Icarus, according to a NASA news report.
"We may be looking at the act of birth, where this object is just leaving the rings and heading off to be a moon in its own right," Murray said.
NASA officials said the Cassini-Huygens space probe has documented a sort of bulge in Saturn's A Ring - the outermost of its larger, brighter bands - that measures 750 miles or 1,200 kilometers long and 6 miles or 10 kilometers wide, according to a Time report.
Experts believe that the rings, which are composed of ice, rock and dust, are the nurseries in which all of Saturn's moons were born. The materials then coalesce and clump, adding more mass and gravity, which causes the moons to grow bigger.
NASA officials said the new moon - if it really exists - is a small one, about only 0.5 miles in diameter and somewhere within the 750-mile clump, but there's no telling exactly how large it can get.
The ringed planet already has 53 confirmed moons and nine more candidates, which are described as "provisional." Most of the moons are made of ice, NASA experts said.
"Witnessing the possible birth of tiny moon is an exciting, unexpected event," said Cassini Project Scientist Linda Spilker, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
It might take another two years before more detailed information about Peggy becomes available. Scientists said the baby moon is still too small for Cassini's cameras to take a clear image.
However, by late 2016, Cassini's orbit will move closer to the outer edge of the A ring and will have the opportunity to take photos of what scientists believe will prove to be Saturn's final moon.
The Cassini space probe - a joint project involving NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency - has been orbiting through the Saturnian system since 2004.
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Source : http://www.fashiontimes.com/articles/5147/20140417/saturn-spotted-giving-birth-possible-new-moon.htm
