Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2000
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2000dda....31.0804s&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DDA Meeting #31, #08.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 32, p.864
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
1
Scientific paper
Continuing analysis of the Voyager images has shed more light on the kinematics of clumps in Saturn's narrow F Ring. Principal properties are as follows. (1) At any given time, the ring holds 2--3 extremely bright clumps (each several times brighter than the local average for the ring) and perhaps 20--40 identifiable smaller clumps. In practice, the closer one looks at the rings, the finer detail one finds. (2) No major clumps persist for the nine months between the Voyager encounters, but most survive for the periods of up to 7 weeks they can be detected during a single encounter. (3) Clumps travel at distinct mean motions, indicating semi-major axes a generally in the range 140,225+/-15 km. These correspond to the brightest ``γ '' strand in the Voyager images (Murray et al., Icarus 129, 304--316, 1997). (4) However, additional clumps are observed to travel at faster speeds, corresponding to a=140,150--140,210 km. These may correspond to the ``β '' strand but are more widely distributed. (5) In the Voyager 2 images, the single most prominent clump seems to eject smaller clumps behind it on time scales of 2 weeks. However, nothing analogous is observed in Voyager 1 data. (6) A few close-up images of the fainter strands show radial variations that suggest the presence of high-order radial modes. (7) The brightest clumps are often seen to be radially displaced (either inward or outward) from the surrounding strands. This would suggest that they differ in orbital eccentricity from the surrounding material. (8) Most sections of the ring show a distinct 3.2o periodicity in clump spacing, as expected from the gravitational perturbations by Prometheus. Dynamical models for some of these peculiar properties will be discussed, but many remain unexplained.
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