Three-dimensional Structure of Saturn's Rings from Cassini UVIS Stellar Occultations

Details Three-dimensional Structure of Saturn's Rings from Cassini UVIS Stellar Occultations Three-dimensional Structure of Saturn's Rings from Cassini UVIS Stellar Occultations

Sep 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008epsc.conf..759c&link_type=abstract

European Planetary Science Congress 2008, Proceedings of the conference held 21-25 September, 2008 in Münster, Germany. Online a

Computer Science

Scientific paper

The Cassini Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS) observed more than 80 stellar occultations by Saturn's rings during Cassini's four-year prime mission. The typical ring-plane spatial resolution of these occultations is ~20 m. Because the occultations are of stars in a variety of directions with respect to the rings, the observed transmitted light from multiple occultations provides a way to probe the threedimensional arrangement of ring particles. We have combined occultation measurements to reveal the structure of self-gravity wakes in the rings [1, 2]. Combining occultations has also revealed the structure of weak density waves in the Cassini Division [3] and B ring. The UVIS star occultations also resolve, for the first time, the many sharp edges in the ring system. The radial variation is convolved with the vertical thickness of the ring in a single occultation profile (Figure 1). By combining multiple occultations of the same edge from different viewing geometries we can separate the radial and vertical structure and solve for the three-dimensional structure of the edge, assuming the edge structure is constant with longitude. We also observe time-dependent and azimuthally variable structure, including the signature of small embedded moonlets and incomplete ringlets (Figure 2). Here we review the discoveries of the fine-scale structure of Saturn's rings enabled by these high resolution stellar occultations.

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