Analytical description of physical librations of Saturnian coorbital satellites Janus and Epimetheus

Details Analytical description of physical librations of Saturnian coorbital satellites Janus and Epimetheus Analytical description of physical librations of Saturnian coorbital satellites Janus and Epimetheus

2010-03-02

arxiv.org/abs/1003.0557v2

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astrophysics

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics

Scientific paper

Janus and Epimetheus are famously known for their distinctive horseshoe-shaped orbits resulting from a 1:1 orbital resonance. Every four years these two satellites swap their orbits by a few tens of kilometers as a result of their close encounter. Recently Tiscareno et al. (2009) have proposed a model of rotation based on images from the Cassini orbiter. These authors inferred the amplitude of rotational librational motion in longitude at the orbital period by fitting a shape model to the recent Cassini ISS images. By a quasiperiodic approximation of the orbital motion, we describe how the orbital swap impacts the rotation of the satellites. To that purpose, we have developed a formalism based on quasi-periodic series with long and short-period librations. In this framework, the amplitude of the libration at the orbital period is found proportional to a term accounting for the orbital swap. We checked the analytical quasi-periodic development by performing a numerical simulation and find both results in good agreement. To complete this study, the results regarding the short-period librations are studied with the help of an adiabatic-like approach.

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