Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2000
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000dda....31.0407l&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DDA Meeting #31, #04.07; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 32, p.860
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
2
Scientific paper
A tidal origin of the 4:3 mean-motion resonance of Saturn's satellites Titan and Hyperion suffers from the requirement that the dissipation parameter Q of Saturn for Titan induced tides must be much smaller than the minimum effective Q established for Mimas induced tides. An alternative scenario is that Hyperion formed by the accretion of satellitesimals at the resonance. We investigate the viability of this alternative scenario by using the symplectic integrator SyMBA to simulate the accretion of satellitesimals in the Hyperion region of phase space. N-body simulations with N 1000 particles initially, different imposed rates of growth of Titan's mass and eccentricity, and different initial total satellitesimal masses are performed. Preliminary results indicate: 1. The interaction among the satellitesimals is sufficiently strong that the accretion process is not significantly affected by the presence of the mean-motion resonances with Titan. In particular, there is preference for the particles to grow outside the resonances rather than within them. Although several particles are trapped in each of several resonances, there appears to be no significant coagulation of these resonant particles --- a result that may be due to the restriction to non-crossing orbits due to the phasing within the resonance. 2. Gas drag is added to some of the calculations, but it is sufficiently weak that it has little effect on the accretion of particles. If the drag persists, the accreted particles will decay to and be trapped within the first strong resonance encountered at smaller semimajor axes. 3. The accretion timescale is sufficiently short that 1--3 large embryos of masses comparable to current Hyperion mass can be formed in less than 106 Titan periods, but in all cases there are no large embryos at the 4:3 resonance --- large embryos near the 3:2 resonance being preferred. The sometime expressed assumption that accretion is enhanced near orbital resonances is so far not supported by these simulations. Hyperion is not going to yield the secret of its history easily.
Lee Michael H.
Peale Stanton J.
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