Developments in Brief : Two More Moons May Ring Saturn

Scientists have found evidence of two more moons among Saturn’s rings, and they say the moons may have helped furnish the icy material that forms the rings around that planet.

“It’s significant, in terms of the dynamics and the evolution of ring systems, just to know there are large bodies in there,” said Len Tyler of Stanford’s Center for Radar Astronomy and co-author of a report on the findings in the British journal Nature.

Such bodies “may be sources of some of the ring material,” Tyler said, and the new finding “is a further clue as to how rings work.” He said he believes other moons still circle undetected among the rings.

The moons appear to lie in a gap, called the Cassini division, between two major rings of Saturn. Previously, only one moon had been found among its rings.

Saturn, the second largest planet in the solar system, also has at least 17 moons outside its rings. The rings are composed of ice particles, ranging from pea-sized to chunks as big as a house.

The new moons were detected using radio waves, beamed through the rings toward Earth from the Voyager 1 space probe. Analysis showed “strange undulations” in the density of material in the rings, Tyler said.