Hiding Silicates in Saturn's Rings

Details Hiding Silicates in Saturn's Rings Hiding Silicates in Saturn's Rings

Sep 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.1805l&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #18.05

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

A series of numerical simulations are presented that look at the impact of replacing some of the ice particles in Saturn's rings with silicate particles. All particles are modeled as perfect spheres with no tangential friction. Collisions and particle self-gravity are considered and regions in both the A and B rings have been explored. The particles that represent silicates are given a density of 3 g/cm3 while the icy particles have a density of 0.5 g/cm3. Simulations were done using particles of a single size as well as size distributions and parameters were picked to roughly match measured surface densities.
The primary conclusion of this work is that silicate material is well hidden from observations as it collapses down to form core-like structures in the ephemeral gravity wakes. When 4% of the particles are silicates, less than 1% of the reflected light is reflected from the silicate bodies. The light reflected from silicates preferentially comes from particles that are not currently in gravity wakes. Higher percentages of high density material can also be very effectively hidden. Hence, direct observation of spectra does not serve as a strong bound on ring composition. However, having even 4% silicate material does change the pitch angle and structure of gravity wakes and this might serve as an indirect diagnostic of the presence of higher density material. This is especially relevant in the A ring where gravity wake pitch angle affects the azimuthal brightness asymmetry.
This work supported by NASA PG&G.

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