Saturn's Rings: NASA - Voyager Space Sounds

Artists

Album Info

Release Date: 1990

Label: Brain/Mind Research

Saturn Rings is the most soothing space sound recording. Its deep, throbbing vibrations seem to resonate directly into your bones, with layers of 3-dimensional sound majestically moving around and through you.

Saturn is a giant gas planet which has no solid surface beneath the clouds. The solid material of the planet is in orbit and is known as its rings. Its an "inside-out" planet, so to speak.

Saturn's disk casts a shadow across its ring system. The visible side of the rings is directly illuminated by the sun. The broad dark band in the rings separates the outer A ring from the inner B ring. The C ring is much fainter and closer to the planet. The narrow F ring is just barely visible outside the A ring.

Saturn's Rings are 270,000 km in diameter, but only a few hundred meters thick. Particles are centimeters to decameters in size and are ice. Some may be covered with ice. There are traces of silicate and carbon minerals. There are four main ring groups and three more faint, narrow ring groups separated by gaps called divisions.

Voyager I & II passed by Saturn on November 12, 1980, and on August 15, 1981, respectively. There are many hundreds of Rings which make up the spectacular bands around Saturn. They have been classified into four sections: The C-Ring appears blue; the B-Ring appears brown and green, the Cassini Division appears dark blue and the A-Ring appears gray.

Saturn is a gas giant ball of mostly hydrogen and helium. High winds whip clouds into bright bands across the face of Saturn in tan, orange and ochre. The Rings span a distance equal to the distance between the earth and moon.