Interactions between Prometheus and the F Ring

Details Interactions between Prometheus and the F Ring Interactions between Prometheus and the F Ring

Sep 1999

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1999dda....31.0902s&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #31, #09.02

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

2

Scientific paper

Prometheus is the inner of the two ``shepherding'' moons straddling Saturn's F Ring, and is both larger and closer to the ring than its counterpart Pandora. It was found to be lagging its predicted orbital longitude by 19 degrees in 1995, and that lag has been increasing since. We are exploring a variety of possible interactions between the F Ring and Prometheus that could give rise to the observed orbital behavior. (1) When Prometheus passes a sector of the ring, its gravitational perturbations generate periodic, short-lived clumps. If these clumps persist until the next passage of Prometheus 69 days later, the second passage can cause a segment of the ring to be ``thrown'' systematically to a higher or lower orbit. Because energy must be conserved, Prometheus should recoil slightly. (2) The F Ring could easily contain a small number of as-yet undetected 1--5 km objects. The gravitational interaction of these bodies with Prometheus could introduce a small and apparently random component to Prometheus' motion. (3) The orbital pericenters of the F Ring and Prometheus become anti-aligned (and therefore their radial separations are minimized) every 15--20 years. Shortly before the anti-alignment, Prometheus experiences a net positive tangential force from the ring, causing its mean motion to decrease slightly. Its mean motion returns to the initial value after the anti-alignment but the net effect is a small lag in longitude. Our study involves a combination of analytic modeling and direct orbit integrations. Initial numerical simulations do show that the ring undergoes systematic changes in semimajor axis, which could in turn induce the expected recoil in Prometheus' orbit. However, the specific mechanism at work has not yet been determined.

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