Modeling the Cratering Records of Hyperion and Phoebe: Indications of a Shallow-sloped Impactor Population

Details Modeling the Cratering Records of Hyperion and Phoebe: Indications of a Shallow-sloped Impactor Population Modeling the Cratering Records of Hyperion and Phoebe: Indications of a Shallow-sloped Impactor Population

Oct 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.1111r&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #11.11; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.430

Statistics

Scientific paper

The crater size-frequency statistics for the small Saturnian satellites Hyperion and Phoebe show remarkably similar cratering records. Both satellites display near 'empirical saturation' levels of larger craters (> 10 km diameter), while also showing a severe deficit of smaller craters (< 10 km diameter), with crater density falling off rapidly as one moves to smaller sizes. In this work, we report results which use a numerical stochastic cratering model to reproduce the cratering statistics of these two bodies. This numerical model builds upon earlier models, such as that described in Chapman & McKinnon (1986), and takes advantage of recent developments in the pi-group scaling-relationships for both gravity- and strength-dominated cratering, as well as modern computing capabilities. The satellite's surface is represented by a 2000 by 2000 matrix which utilizes periodic boundary conditions to depict a contiguous target area. Model 'craters' placed on this surface are randomly produced via a user-supplied impactor distribution, and range in size from 1 to 1024 pixels, covering 20 standard size bins. With each impact, the crater erasure effects of super-positioning, ejecta blanket coverage, and regional seismic shaking are included. At specified time-steps in the simulation, crater counting is done automatically, tabulating both a 'true' count (including all crater rim fragments) and an 'observed' count (including only craters which have retained at least 50% of their rim). This modeling indicates that both Hyperion and Phoebe have primarily been exposed to a shallow (roughly -1.0 to -1.6 cumulative power-law) sloped impactor population, with small impactors only marginally outnumbering large impactors. In turn, this bombarding population produces a 'quasi-equilibrium' paucity of small craters on the target surface, in which the small crater numbers are unable to reach empirical saturation due to the erasing effects of the numerous large craters.

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