2021 Symposium for Student Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

This project will be taking a dive into the Cassini Mission that aimed at gathering data about Saturn and its ring system. More specifically, we will be looking at Enceladus, Phoebe, and Iapetus, and how they interact with one another. Cassini revealed to us the complexity of Saturn's rings and moons, the dynamic relationship between them, as well as shed light on potential moons with the capacity to maintain life. Our project will investigate how the main rings, including the little known E-Ring, were formed and their interactions with the moons that are embedded in them. We will analyze the data acquired from the Cassini Mission and explain the importance and impact that this had on our understanding of distant orbital bodies within our solar system. Additionally, we will include data gathered by the Spitzer Space Telescope, which discovered the largest ring in our solar system - a ring that can only be detected through infrared radiation. This ring is being generated by Saturn's moon Phoebe and could potentially solve the mystery of Iapetus's dual coloring.