Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2004-08-05
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
56 pages, 24 figures, accepted for publication in The Astronomical Journal
Scientific paper
10.1086/424937
Although analytical studies on the secular motion of the irregular satellites have been published recently, these theories have not yet been satisfactorily reconciled with the results of direct numerical integrations. These discrepancies occur because in secular theories the disturbing function is averaged over orbital motions, whereas instead one should take into account some large periodic terms, most notably the so-called ``evection''. We demonstrate that such terms can be incorporated into the Kozai formalism, and that our synthetic approach produces much better agreement with results from symplectic integrations. Using this method, we plot the locations of secular resonances in the orbital-element space, and we note that the distribution of irregular satellite clusters appears to be non-random. We find that the large majority of irregular-satellite groups cluster close to the secular resonances, with several objects having practically stationary pericenters. None of the largest satellites belong to this class, so we argue that this dichotomy implies that the smaller near-resonant satellites might have been captured differently than the largest irregulars.
Burns Joseph A.
Cuk Matija
No associations
LandOfFree
On the Secular Behavior of Irregular Satellites does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with On the Secular Behavior of Irregular Satellites, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and On the Secular Behavior of Irregular Satellites will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-500233