moonlet makin' waves

Here's a fascinating little movie from CICLOPS, the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations. It was taken when Saturn's rings were edge-on to the Sun (which happens only twice each 30 Earth years). The tiny moon Daphnis, five miles wide, goes plowing through the rings in the 26-mile-wide Keeler Gap in the A ring, perturbing the ring material both in front of it and behind it. The A ring is only about thirty feet thick, and the waves being raised by the moonlet are fifty to 150 ti...