The long-term evolution of E ring particles

Details The long-term evolution of E ring particles The long-term evolution of E ring particles

Sep 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008epsc.conf..776b&link_type=abstract

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

Physics

Scientific paper

The data returned by the Cassini spacecraft drastically changed our picture of Saturns diffuse E ring - the largest known ring in the Solar system. Since Cassini is equipped with a dust detector [1] it became possible for the first time to investigate the evolution cycle of the Saturnian dust. There are two processes feeding the ring with fresh dust: collisions of micrometeoroids with the surfaces of icy moons and dust injection by the recently discovered ice volcanoes on the moon Enceladus [2, 3]. After injection into the ring the particles spend most of their lifespan as ring particles. Finally, the grains get lost by collisions with the main rings or with the moons. More interesting, some of the ring particles interact strongly with Saturn's magnetic field and will finally form fast dust streams, which were discovered by Cassini during her approach to Saturn. We are still at the beginning of our understanding of the physical processes relevant for the dust life cycle. However, Cassini already provided us with some of the major pieces to accomplish a comprehensive picture. Here, we report on numerical simulations of the long term evolution of ring particles, which are based on most recent Cassini data. We show that most of the ring particles slowly migrate outwards until they get locked in the vicinity of the Rhea orbit.

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