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The (Not So) Sad Story of Peggy, Saturn’s Newest Moon
Peggy, the small Saturn moon caught in the act of being born, is still alive.
First observed in 2013, Peggy is about 1.2 miles wide and lives near the edge of Saturn’s A ring. The tiny moonlet’s fate was an open question two years ago, when observations in 2014 did not reveal the same big, bright blip in the rings that originally betrayed Peggy’s presence. At the time, planetary scientist Carl Murray surmised that Peggy had either been gravitationally booted into the void, or had broken apart in a collision.
But in Cassini observations from 2015 and 2016, Peggy is back. It does appear as though the moonlet is not entirely intact, as a new chunk of