The Orientation and Precession of the Pole of Saturn

Details The Orientation and Precession of the Pole of Saturn The Orientation and Precession of the Pole of Saturn

Jul 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dda....38.1306j&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #38, #13.06

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Scientific paper

French et al. (1993 Icarus 103, 163) determined the orientation of Saturn's pole from the radio ring occultation of Voyager 1, the ring occultation of the star δSco seen with the Voyager 2 Ultraviolet Spectrometer, and the 1989 July 3 ring occultation of the star 28 Sgr. The IAU adopted their pole (Davies et al. 1996 Celest. Mech. 63, 127) together with pole rates based on the precession of the Saturn equator computed by G. Struve (1898 Publ. l'Obs. Cent. Nicolas., 11 ser. 2.) from a theoretical model of torques due to the Sun and Titan. Another stellar occultation by Saturn's rings was observed on 1991 October 2--3 with the Hubble Space Telescope. Bosh (1994 Ph.D. thesis, MIT) combined the measurements from this and the earlier occultations to update the pole orientation. Nicholson and French (1997 BAAS 29, 1097) estimated the pole precession from 22 ring plane crossing times over a period of 280 years; their results agreed with Struve's theory.
We have derived an analytical model for the pole direction angles from the rigid body rotational equations of motion with couples exerted by the Sun, Titan, and Iapetus. After verifying the model by comparison with a numerical integration, we fit it to the occultation and ring plane crossing observations. Our pole orientation and precession rate are in good agreement with the previous determinations. We find that the ICRF right ascension and declination of the pole can be represented by
α = 40°596731 - 0°052461 T - 0°031396∿Ω1 - 0°001791∿Ω2
+ 0°000101∿Ω3
δ = 83°534290 - 0°005968 T + 0°003517 cos Ω1+ 0°000201 cos Ω2
+ 0°000011 cos Ω3
with Ω1 = 24°058014 - 50°933966 T , Ω2 = 325°758187 - 10°389768 T
Ω3 = 234°873847 - 10°389768 T
and T = Julian centuries from epoch J2000

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