More Saturn ring awesomeness

Yesterday, I wrote about a weird event at Saturn, where some object apparently blasted through Saturn's rings. But that's not the only cool thing that's happened out there. As I mentioned in that post, Saturn's rings are almost exactly edge-on to the Sun, meaning that anything that sticks out above the phenomenally flat rings will cast a long, long shadow. We're seeing more and more of that as the rings aim themselves at the Sun -- with them being exactly aligned with the Sun -- the Saturnian equinox, as it were -- on August 11, tomorrow! Even now there are wonders to behold. Saturn's narrow F ring, outside the main A ring, has been getting tortured, twisted, manipulated by the gravity of nearby moons. Whenever some event or another moves particles in the rings above or below the ring plane, they cast one of these reaching shadows. We're so close ...