All About Phoebe

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zavvy

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<b>All About Phoebe</b><br /><br />LINK<br /><br />Data from the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens mission are providing convincing evidence that Saturn’s moon Phoebe was formed elsewhere in the Solar System, and was only later caught by the planet's gravitational pull.<br /> <br />One way to unlock Phoebe’s secrets is using Cassini’s Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), developed by a team of US (JPL), French and Italian (ASI) scientists and engineers. The science team is made by a large international group of US, Italian, French and German scientists led by the University of Arizona. <br /><br />This instrument identifies the chemical compositions of the surfaces, atmospheres and rings of Saturn and its moons by measuring colours of visible light and infrared energy emitted or reflected (spectra). <br /><br />The origin of Phoebe, which is the outermost large satellite of Saturn, is of particular interest because its orbit is in the opposite direction (retrograde) and inclined at a different angle to Saturn's regular satellites (with ‘prograde’, low-inclination circular orbits). <br /><br />Phoebe's generally dark surface shows evidence of water ice, but otherwise the surface most closely resembles that of asteroids and small outer Solar System bodies such as Chiron and Pholus that are thought to have originated in the Kuiper belt. <br /><br />Recent results from VIMS suggest that Phoebe was gravitationally ‘captured’ by Saturn, having formed from ice and rocks ‘accreting’, or joining together, outside the region of the ‘solar nebula’ gas and dust in which Saturn formed. <br /><br />The other moons probably accreted within the nebula in which Saturn itself formed. VIMS made its observations during the close fly-by of Phoebe by Cassini-Huygens on 11 June 2004. <br /><br />The composition of Phoebe should reflect the composition of the region of the solar nebula where it formed. If it
 
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