The Cassini Division cuts a nearly 4,800 km gap in Saturn’s rings
Between Saturn’s bright B ring and outer A ring lies the Cassini Division — a dark-looking lane nearly 4,800 kilometers wide that Giovanni Cassini spotted from Earth in 1675.
It is not empty vacuum: sparse icy particles still orbit there, cleared and stirred mainly by gravitational resonances with moons such as Mimas. Close-up images show ringlets and dust waves inside the “gap.”
A dark stripe can be a laboratory. The Cassini Division taught that moons and resonances sculpt ring architecture long before spacecraft arrived.
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