Modeling The Size Distribution Of Saturn's Rings

Details Modeling The Size Distribution Of Saturn's Rings Modeling The Size Distribution Of Saturn's Rings

Oct 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.0708a&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #7.08; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.421

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Spatial structures such as density and bending waves, self-gravity and moonlet wakes are among the better known pieces in the puzzle of the formation and evolution of Saturn's main rings. But also the actual sizes of ring particles are very important to understand the long-term behavior or the system. The Cassini mission is continuing to provide a wealth of new observations. Among those are the transient features, bright clumps, and brightness fluctuations in the rather mysterious F ring that are partially attributed to a population of moonlets hidden well within the bright core of the structure. Detections of opaque features during stellar occultations of the UVIS and VIMS instruments strongly support this idea. Further, the discovery of embedded moonlets in Saturn's A ring raises questions about the origin of these objects; not to forget about the km-sized moons, Pan and Daphnis, orbiting within the A ring. Are they remnants of a shattered moon or is it possible to accrete these objects from the surrounding ring material? Currently, the theory still lags behind the observations. Here, we employ a generalized kinetic approach aiming at the long-term evolution of the size distribution that cannot be achieved by current N-body simulations and discuss its implications for the evolution and origin of Saturn's rings.

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