Vertical Ripples in the Jovian Ring

Details Vertical Ripples in the Jovian Ring Vertical Ripples in the Jovian Ring

Oct 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.1901s&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #19.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.980

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

1

Scientific paper

Galileo spacecraft images from 1996 revealed a pattern of vertical "ripples" or corrugations in the main Jovian ring. The pattern appeared clearly in a set of three images, but was never reported again. Later ring images from Galileo in 2000-2001 and from New Horizons in 2007 were similar to the 1996 data set in terms of viewing geometry, resolution and sensitivity, but they did not show any ripples with comparable wavelength and amplitude. We revisit these data sets in light of the Cassini ISS result that corrugations in Saturn's rings are a spiral pattern that winds tighter due to differential nodal regression. A more detailed re-analysis of the 1996 images reveals that the Jovian pattern is a superposition of two sinusoidal corrugations. The stronger pattern has a wavelength of 1700 km and a vertical amplitude of 3 km. The weaker one has a wavelength of 600 km and an amplitude of 0.6 km. We now find these same corrugations in Galileo images from 2000, at shorter wavelengths of 700 km and 500 km. The reduced wavelengths are consistent with the differential nodal regression rate expected for Jupiter's gravity field; the wavenumber of corrugations in the Jovian ring is predicted to increase linearly by 1/(4000 km) per year. The wavelengths should be 200-300 km during the New Horizons flyby, too short to be detected in that data set. With two patterns now detected in Jupiter's ring and one in Saturn's, vertical corrugations appear to be more common features of planetary rings than had been previously suspected. We investigate the nature of the events that might initiate these features.

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