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Saturn’s closest moon looks like a UFO — or pasta

ajc.com

Credit: NASA

Credit: NASA

By Bob D'Angelo
March 11, 2017

On Thursday, NASA released photographs of Pan, one of Saturn's 53 confirmed moons, and its distinctive, bulging shape has viewers comparing it to a flying saucer — or ravioli.

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"Saturn's tiny moon resembles a large ravioli … Yum!" tweeted photojournalist Seph Lawless.

The images of Saturn's innermost moon were taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, showing the form of the tiny satellite, which has an average radius of 8.8 miles. Pan rotates 83,000 miles away from Saturn and is located within the Encke Gap of Saturn's A-ring. It orbits the planet in 13.8 hours.

Cassini's Twitter account tweeted a gif showing the raw images.

According to NASA's website, Pan's strange shape comes from what is called an equatorial ridge, a characteristic it shares with one of its sister moons, Atlas, CNN reported.

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