I find myself, perhaps irrationally, quite irked that the picture headlining the article uses a picture of current Earth with rings, when Earth's surface 466 million years ago looked much different[1]. The paper itself [2] does have a map, although (understandably) not an artist's depiction. Most other sources covering the paper appear to have repurposed "ringed terrestrial planet" artwork, but I found one has an artist's rendition[3] to mollify myself.
1. https://dinosaurpictures.org/ancient-earth#450 2. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0012821X2... 3. https://www.yahoo.com/news/earth-had-saturn-rings-466-182200...
Nice opening image, but what would the view be like from Earth?
Ron Miller is an artist who made some very nice visualizations. I can’t vouch for the scientific accuracy, but they seem plausible enough to me, and consistent with the images I’ve seen of Saturn’s rings from nearby probes.
https://www.planetary.org/articles/20130626-earths-skies-sat...
Off the top of my head, if the rings were a narrow band around the Earth, and were aligned with the terrestrial equator, they would be less visible from high or low latitudes. If they were aligned with the plane of the ecliptic, then they would be visible as a band following the 'zodiac constellations', and thus visible much further North and South.
At night, in the shadow of the Earth, I'd think that they would be dark, perhaps even invisible. Perhaps moonlight would serve to illuminate them, depending on the relative position of the Sun and Moon.
I'd guess they would look most impressive around and dusk. The particle density and albedo would influence whether they would be visible during full daylight. The ring density would affect whether they had sharp edges or simply faded out away from the centre.
Only part of the visible rings would be dark at night. You'd see sunlit parts on both sides of the shaded part.
May see rings around Earth again.. it's the expected state that space debris settles into after Kessler Syndrome.
I was about to make a snarky comment about starlink. It's getting harder to take a shot of the sky without one of those pesky floaties.
They low orbit satellites are only visible while they're in sunlight near sunrise/sunset.
Yeah this. I was 50 miles from civilisation in some mountains in central Asia last year trying to do astrophotography and I had to edit out the flying space trash after!
If you needed rescuing from there, or if a nearby village was affected by a natural disaster, this flying space trash is what's saving lives.
It makes sense for the vast majority of people to prefer that against the slight inconvenience in editing out satellite tracks faced by a tiny tiny community of ground bases astrophotographers.
No it's really not. Please don't think suburban USA can be extrapolated to the middle of bloody nowhere.
I might be able to get a message off, but how the hell do you contact the emergency services and who the hell is going to rescue me in a country with one rescue helicopter that was out of action at the time?
In circumstances like that it's better to actually get some mountain safety training, have some procedures and other comms equipment in place. And importantly travel in a group with the right equipment (including 4 legged transport devices).
As for the astrophotography that was opportunistic.
Low orbit satellites are unnecessary for emergency/comm. Fewer, dimmer, satellites at higher orbits are actually cheaper, but LEO constellations are now subsidized by the military industrial complex (there is other value to be low).
Debris left in orbits below 600 km normally fall back to Earth within several years. The Starlink constellation is at around 350 km and below.
Starlink is actually 550 km and Amazon's Kuiper at 620 km.
But the missile interceptors for the orbital 'American Iron Dome'* in the news lately would be ~ 350 km.
* 2024 GOP platform #8: https://ballotpedia.org/The_Republican_Party_Platform,_2024 which developed out of Elon Musk and Mike Griffin's initiative for their founding of SpaceX: https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_D._Griffin#Career#:~:text...
it's a (Grok) ai transcript, but I found this SpaceX/Starlink history fascinating. Detailing how Musk has been working with key people on (Reagan's) Star Wars 2.0 for decades: https://archive.today/D2zIG#:~:text=Shotwell
The only explanation I've heard for Musk's political antics that makes cold sense.
You are right, it looks like I got a mistaken number from the Reddit (who could have predicted that).
It says here that earlier this year Starlink was seeking permission to go lower. I wonder how that went.
https://universemagazine.com/en/below-the-iss-orbit-starlink...
why downvoting an accurate and helpful comment?
There isnt nearly enough mass up there in all the foreseeable sat constellations. They need enough collective mass to overcome the extreem orbital inclinations/speeds we use for sats. For a visible ring to form, we would have to send billions of sats into high/slow orbits and then just forget about them for millions of years. Even then, they would likely form into mini moons first before those moons eventually broke up into rings.
I had to laugh thinking that we (or some alien race) might come across a ringed planet only to find its rings are made of orbital space junk from a long-dead species that once flourished on the planet.
This made me consider what sort of orbital archeology would take place. I imagine it would be a gold mine for anyone trying to study that civilization, and attempting to snatch pieces out of orbit would be a huge focus.
hopefully the sight encourages them from leaving their own waste behind
The ring of Uranus. One of the wonders of the solar system.
> Planetary rings may be one of space’s many spectacles, but in our solar system, they’re a dime a dozen. While Saturn’s rings are the brightest and most extensive, Jupiter and Uranus and Neptune have them, too,likely the dwindling remains of shredded asteroids or comets.
Reading "The Ring Makers of Saturn", Dr. Bergrun suggests something very different.