UVIS ring occultations show F ring feature location and optical depth correlated with Prometheus

Details UVIS ring occultations show F ring feature location and optical depth correlated with Prometheus UVIS ring occultations show F ring feature location and optical depth correlated with Prometheus

May 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dda....41.1104m&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #41, #11.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 41, p.939

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

We find 24 statistically significant features in the F ring occultations using the High Speed Photometer (HSP) channel of the Cassini Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS). These features are likely transient clumps of material embedded in the ring, each of which attenuates stellar signal during an occultation because the ring material is more densely packed at that location. In fact, two of these features are opaque, indicating they may be solid moonlets. Two trends are evident in the azimuthal location of these 24 F ring features with respect to that of Prometheus. First, the orbital locations of these features are mostly opposite Prometheus, as 11 of the 24 occupy the orbital region separated from Prometheus by 180° ± 20°. Second, average feature optical depth is maximum near the antipode of Prometheus in orbit. Our hypothesis is that these results show aggregation and disaggregation of clumps after Prometheus passes by. As Prometheus passes interior to the F ring, it encounters material once every synodic period, 68 days. Optical depth indicates density of ring material along the line of sight, so as material clumps together, we expect to see higher optical depths. Thus we infer that the encounter stimulates clumping of material that reaches a maximum 180° downstream. This may reinforce similar evidence that Ring-Moon interaction stimulates clumping in the F ring region from Cassini imaging (Beurle, et al., 2010) and at the B ring edge (Esposito, et al., 2010). Esposito, et al. (2010) suggest that the combined mass and velocity evolution of the ring system resembles a predator/prey model.
This research was supported by the Cassini Project.

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