Moonlet Propellor: What are we seeing?

Details Moonlet Propellor: What are we seeing? Moonlet Propellor: What are we seeing?

Sep 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008dps....40.3004l&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #40, #30.04; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 40, p.445

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

The presence of a band of moonlets in the A ring has now been established by the identification of bright regions in the rings (Sremcevic, et al., Nature 449, 1019-1021, Tiscareno et al., Astron. J. 135, 1083-1091, 2008). These bright regions are often called propellers based on the characteristic shape seen in simulations. The propeller structures in these simulations are actually low density regions that are edges with high density wakes. The masses of the moonlets in observations are estimated by characteristic scalings seen in simulations where the radial separation between the features scales as the Hill sphere of the moonlet. More recent simulations that include the added realism of particle self-gravity and size distributions find that these interfere with the formation of the high density wakes. This leads to the question of what exactly we are seeing in Cassini observations of the propellers. This work presents large scale simulations ( 25 million particles) aimed at determining whether the bright propellers can be caused by moonlets disrupting gravitational aggregates. Scaling rules for such structures and conditions under which they do or don't form are explored. This work has been supported by NASA PG&G.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Moonlet Propellor: What are we seeing? does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Moonlet Propellor: What are we seeing?, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Moonlet Propellor: What are we seeing? will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1438188