Related papers: The ballistic transport instability in Saturn's ri…
Saturn's inner B-ring and its C-ring support wavetrains of contrasting amplitudes but with similar length scales, 100-1000 km. In addition, the inner B-ring is punctuated by two intriguing `flat' regions between radii 93,000 km and 98,000…
Planetary rings sustain a continual bombardment of hypervelocity meteoroids that erode the surfaces of ring particles on time scales of 10^5 - 10^7 years. The debris ejected from such impacts re-accretes on to the ring, though often at a…
Voyager images and Cassini occultation data have previously shown that the behavior of the outer edge of Saturn's massive B ring is determined only in part by a static response to the 2:1 inner Lindblad resonance with Mimas. In Cassini…
Certain spiral density waves in Saturn's rings are generated through resonances with planetary normal modes, making them valuable probes of Saturn's internal structure. Previous research has primarily focused on the rotation rates of these…
We perform axisymmetric hydrodynamical simulations that describe the nonlinear outcome of the viscous overstability in dense planetary rings. These simulations are particularly relevant for Cassini observations of fine-scale structure in…
Saturn's C ring contains multiple spiral patterns that appear to be density waves driven by periodic gravitational perturbations. In other parts of Saturn's rings, such waves are generated by Lindblad resonances with Saturn's various moons,…
Normal mode oscillations in Saturn excite density and bending waves in the C Ring, providing a valuable window into the planet's interior. Saturn's fundamental modes (f modes) excite the majority of the observed waves, while…
Seismology allows for direct observational constraints on the interior structures of stars and planets. Recent observations of Saturn's ring system have revealed the presence of density waves within the rings excited by oscillation modes…
Saturn's C ring contains multiple structures that appear to be density waves driven by time-variable anomalies in the planet's gravitational field. Semi-empirical extensions of density wave theory enable the observed wave properties to be…
This paper addresses the fine-scale axisymmetric structure exhibited in Saturn's A and B-rings. We aim to explain both the periodic microstructure on 150-220m, revealed by the Cassini UVIS and RSS instruments, and the irregular variations…
Some wave features found in the C-ring of Saturn appear to be excited by resonances with normal mode oscillations of the planet. The waves are found at locations in the rings where the ratio of orbital to oscillation frequencies is given by…
We suggest that the irregular structure in Saturn's B ring arises from the formation of shear-free ring-particle assemblies of up to ~100 km in radial extent. The characteristic scale of the irregular structure is set by the competition…
Certain regions of Saturn's rings exhibit periodic opacity variations with characteristic radial wavelengths of up to a few hundred meters that have been attributed to viscous overstabilities. The Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer…
In a previous paper (Hedman and Nicholson 2013), we developed tools that allowed us to confirm that several of the waves in Saturn's rings were likely generated by resonances with fundamental sectoral normal modes inside Saturn itself. Here…
We present results from large-scale particle simulations of the viscous overstability in Saturn's rings. The overstability generates a variety of structure on scales covering a few hundred metres to several kilometres, including…
The Cassini mission provided key measurements needed to determine the absolute age of Saturn's rings, including the extrinsic micrometeoroid flux at Saturn, the volume fraction of non-icy pollutants in the rings, and the total ring mass.…
We use a state-of-the-art physics-based model of electromagnetic scattering to analyze average circular polarization ratios measured for the A and B rings of Saturn at a wavelength of 12.6 cm. This model is directly based on the Maxwell…
Previous investigations of Saturn's outer D ring (73,200-74,000 km from Saturn's center) identified periodic brightness variations whose radial wavenumber increased linearly over time. This pattern was attributed to a vertical corrugation,…
Seismology of the gas giants holds the potential to resolve long-standing questions about their internal structure and rotation state. We construct a family of Saturn interior models constrained by the gravity field and compute their…
Recent studies of stellar occultations observed by the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) onboard the Cassini spacecraft have demonstrated that multiple spiral wave structures in Saturn's rings are probably generated by…