— unpredictable thoughts

Saturn Equinox 2009

August 11, 2009—A mys­tery object that punched through one of Sat­urn’s thin outer rings cre­ated a glit­ter­ing spray of ice crys­tals and pulled some mate­r­ial along in its wake, as seen in this rare image recently released by NASA’s Cassini orbiter.

It’s believed that the object is a moon­let. yes a lit­tle moon. There are some 60 moon­lets around Sat­urn. Ok so this is what hap­pens to make Sat­urn disappear:

“When­ever equinox occurs on Sat­urn, sun­light will hit Saturn’s thin rings, the ring plane, edge-on,” said Spilker.“The light reflect­ing off this extremely nar­row band is so small that for all intents and pur­poses the rings sim­ply vanish.”

Saturn’s rings are 200,000 miles wide, but amaz­ingly are only about 30 feet thick.

see :
Sci­ence Daily
Cassini Equinox Mission