Other
Scientific paper
Jan 2012
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2012aas...21912205n&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #219, #122.05
Other
Scientific paper
In addition to their incomparable beauty in a small telescope, the rings of Saturn have long provided astronomers with a nearby laboratory for developing and testing theories of disk dynamics. After seven years of successful operations, the Cassini orbiter has greatly increased our knowledge of this system, and revealed many new and unexpected phenomena. Ring thicknesses of as little as 5-10 meters are inferred from particle velocity dispersions and from the ubiquitous `self-gravity wakes'. The latter are close cousins of the trailing structures seen in simulations of self-gravitating stellar disks in the 1980s. Two of the 15 or so narrow gaps in the rings are maintained by km-size embedded moonlets; the others remain unexplained though several have edges defined by Lindblad resonances with larger, external satellites. Many gap and ringlet edges are noncircular, exhibiting a surprisingly wide range of perturbations which seem to reflect multiple `normal modes' excited within the rings. Images taken near the Saturnian equinox in mid-2009 under conditions of grazing solar illumination reveal a spiral-shaped warp which extends all the way across the C and D rings. Models of this structure strongly suggest that it is due to an impact on the rings of a cloud of interplanetary debris in September 1983, perhaps due to a disrupted comet like Shoemaker-Levy 9. Although even Cassini is unable to image individual ring particles, the highest resolution images of the A ring show intriguing structures known as `propellers' which appear to be the gravitational signature of large embedded objects, perhaps 100 m in size. Long-term tracking of the largest propellers shows clear evidence for non-keplerian motion, possibly akin to the orbital migration predicted for protoplanets embedded in circumstellar disks.
Burns Joseph A.
Colwell Joshua E.
French Richard G.
Hedman Matthew M.
Marouf Essam A.
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