Remarkably Regular Ripples in Saturn's Dynamic D Ring

Details Remarkably Regular Ripples in Saturn's Dynamic D Ring Remarkably Regular Ripples in Saturn's Dynamic D Ring

Jun 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dda....37.0805b&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #37, #8.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.671

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

Cassini observations are revealing that Saturn's closest ring, its D ring, has changed significantly since Voyager's era. Furthermore, this ring also exhibits unusual phase behavior and, in places, its morphology is difficult to interpret. Here we focus on structures in the outermost D region (73,200 - 74,000 km), just interior to the C ring. A regular pattern with a wavelength of 30 km observed across this region can be attributed to a thin, vertically corrugated ring with a wave height of a few km, viewed at low elevation. A similar pattern was also found during a shallow-elevation (2.7o) stellar occultation on 21-22 November 1995, but then a wavelength of 60 km was present. The wavelength thus seems to shorten with time; the time-separated Cassini observations confirm that the wavenumber increases temporally at a rate 2.54 (+/-0.02) x10-5/km/day. This rate is consistent with differential nodal regression of an initially thin, slightly inclined ring. The differential regression also seems to be faster closer to the planet, as expected if due to higher-order gravity terms. Because Saturn is so near the D ring, many J2n affect the regression rate. Given the radial distance across this structure, one can place strong constraints on a combination of Saturn's J2n, including terms with n > 10, by watching the wave pattern tighten during the remaining years of the Cassini mission. Unwinding the corrugated spiral backwards in time indicates that this region of the D ring was a simple inclined sheet in the year 1984. We propose that a comet or meteoroid may have collided with the D ring at this time, disrupting a D-ring parent body and slightly tilting the angular momentum of the system.

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