NASA's Hubble telescope captures mysterious spokes on rings of Saturn

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured a stunning image of Saturn which had an analogue-esque glow and slightly grainy appearance.

The image was captured by the Hubble Space Telescope on October 22, 2023, which exposed a very interesting detail of the planet.

When the image of the thick white inner band on the rings of Saturn was looked at carefully, shadowy appearances were seen which looked like dirty fingerprints.

These were said to be mysterious ring spokes around Saturn, nearly the size of Earth, which appeared to rotate along with the rings. However, scientists still need to discover what they are.

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Spokes appear only in two or three rotations

The spokes remain visible only in two or three rotations around the planet after which they disappear. This means that capturing them has been a difficult task historically.

Scientists had first spotted them in 1981 by Voyager 2 and it was again seen numerous times in the Cassini mission, which was orbiting around the planet from 2004 to 2017.

Currently, Hubble has been observing this unusual feature under the Outer Planets Atmospheres Legacy (OPAL) programme which keeps on monitoring the weather on the gas giants of the solar system.

"The leading theory is that spokes are tied to Saturn's powerful magnetic field, with some sort of solar interaction with the magnetic field that gives you the spokes," said OPAL program lead scientist Amy Simon of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, in a statement.

In the past images captured by the Hubble telescope, the spokes appeared seasonally and each season lasted for nearly seven years on Saturn.

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"We are heading towards Saturn equinox, when we'd expect maximum spoke activity, with higher frequency and darker spokes appearing over the next few years," Simon said.

This is because the tilt of Saturn at the equinox orients the planet as well as its rings in a way that solar winds are able to collide with the magnetic field of the planet more forcefully, which results in more pronounced spokes.

Scientists have been hoping that continued observation of Saturn and its rings by the Hubble telescope will help in understanding the mystery of the spokes.

(With inputs from agencies)