Saturn's Irregular Satellites

Details Saturn's Irregular Satellites Saturn's Irregular Satellites

Sep 2002

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2002dda....33.1401n&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DDA Meeting #33, #14.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 34, p.943

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

After discovering the first irregular satellites of Uranus in 1997 (Gladman, etal (1998) Nature, 392, 897), our team has undertaken a systematic program to search the Hill spheres of the outer planets for additional small satellites. In 2000/2001 we carried out a survey of the environs of Saturn comparable to our deep 1999 surveys at Uranus and Neptune (Gladman, etal (2000) Icarus, 147, 320). Because Saturn's Hill sphere subtends a diameter of almost 6o, such a survey was impracticable before the advent of large-format CCD array cameras. After a preliminary survey in August 2000, we carried out our main survey with the 3.6 m CFHT telescope and the CFH12k array camera in September 2000. This survey covered a roughly circular region with an outer radius of ~1.0o to a limiting magnitude of mR=24. These two surveys netted a total of 15 candidate irregular satellites, of which 11 were subsequently recovered on several observing runs between October 2000 and January 2001. A 12th satellite was identified in November 2000, just outside our original survey area. These discoveries were reported by Gladman, etal (2001) Nature, 412, 163. In August--November 2001 we recovered all 12 candidate satellites within a few arcminutes of their predicted positions, leading to confirmation of their status as bona fide saturnian satellites and the calculation of improved orbital elements. A striking result of this survey is that 11 of the 12 satellites fall into just three different inclination groups: three at i=34o, four at i=46o, and four at i=165-175o. The latter group includes Phoebe, the only previously-known saturnian irregular. The final object, S/2000 S8, has an inclination of 153o. It has been suggested that these groups may represent the later break-up of three originally-captured planetesimals, although the semimajor axes and eccentricities are much less tightly clustered than are the inclinations. The tightest overall groupings consist of S5/S6 and S4/S10/S11. We will summarize the orbital characteristics of the satellites, as well as discuss arguments for and against a break-up origin. A companion paper by Cuk etal will address the unusual secular dynamics exhibited by several of these objects. This work is supported by NASA's Planetary Astronomy program.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Saturn's Irregular Satellites does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Saturn's Irregular Satellites, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Saturn's Irregular Satellites will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1043324