Saturn's Titan and Maxwell Ringlets from Cassini RSS Observations

Details Saturn's Titan and Maxwell Ringlets from Cassini RSS Observations Saturn's Titan and Maxwell Ringlets from Cassini RSS Observations

Dec 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufm.p13a1296f&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #P13A-1296

Physics

6265 Planetary Rings

Scientific paper

Occultation observations of Saturn's rings during the Cassini mission provide exquisite radial profiles of the rings at sub-km scale, making it possible to measure the orbital properties and internal structure of narrow ringlets and gap edges. Two of the most prominent among these are the Titan and Maxwell ringlets, first measured from Voyager images and occultation profiles more than a quarter of a century ago. By combining Cassini RSS occultation measurements with Earthbased stellar occultation and Voyager data, we have determined highly accurate fits for orbits of the ringlets, including their precession rates. Our current fits include Cassini RSS data from Revs 7 to 12, and are limited in accuracy primarily by km-scale systematic errors in the reconstructed spacecraft trajectory. For the Titan ringlet, we find a=77878.34 ± 0.46 km, e=0.000272 ± 0.000007, and ·ϖ=22.57482± 0.00078°/day (rms=1.85 km). For the Maxwell ringlet, we find a=87509.84 ± 0.31 km, e=0.000440 ± 0.000006, and ·ϖ=14.69289± 0.00020°/day (rms=1.34 km). (All errors are formal errors.) When combined with additional occultation measurements and corrections for spacecraft trajectory errors, such orbital fits will ultimately provide among the strongest constraints on the determination of Saturn's gravitational harmonic coefficients J2, J4, and J6. We have also obtained width-radius fits, and we find that the Titan ringlet varies in width between 16.8 and 32.4 km, while the Maxwell ringlet varies in width between 17.5 and 97.5 km. We have identified a host of additional weakly eccentric and/or inclined narrow features (ae or ai of order a few km or less). We will present a catalog and preliminary fits for these ringlets as well.

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