Related papers: Dynamical Evidence for a Late Formation of Saturn'…
The formation and orbital evolution of Saturn's inner mid-sized moons are still debated. The most puzzling aspects are 1) how the Tethys-Dione pair and the Mimas-Enceladus pair passed through their strong 3:2 mean-motion resonances during…
Lainey et al. (2012), by re-analyzing long-baseline astrometry of Saturn's moons, have found that the moons' tidal evolution is much faster than previously thought, implying an order of magnitude stronger tidal dissipation within Saturn.…
Saturn possesses a dynamically rich system containing numerous moons and impressive rings. Whether the rings of Saturn are much younger than the planet itself has been a long-open question; more recently a young age has been proposed for…
We simulate the collision of precursor icy moons analogous to Dione and Rhea as a possible origin for Saturn's remarkably young rings. Such an event could have been triggered a few hundred million years ago by resonant instabilities in a…
Here we present the current state of knowledge on the long-term evolution of Saturn's moon system due to tides within Saturn. First we provide some background on tidal evolution, orbital resonances and satellite tides. Then we address in…
Saturn's rings are rock-poor, containing 90%-95% ice by mass. As a group, Saturn's moons interior to and including Tethys are also about 90% ice. Tethys itself contains <6% rock by mass, in contrast to its similar-mass outer neighbor Dione,…
The origin of Saturn's inner mid-sized moons (Mimas, Enceladus, Tethys, Dione and Rhea) and Saturn's rings is debated. Charnoz et al. (2010) introduced the idea that the smallest inner moons could form from the spreading of the rings' edge…
Saturn has a dynamically rich satellite system, which includes at least three orbital resonances between three pairs of moons: Mimas-Tethys 4:2, Enceladus-Dione 2:1, and Titan-Hyperion 4:3 mean-motion resonances. Studies of the orbital…
The hypothesis of a recent origin of Saturn's rings and its mid-sized moons is actively debated. It was suggested that a proto-Rhea and a proto-Dione might have collided recently, giving birth to the modern system of mid-sized moons. It is…
Saturn's mid-sized moons (satellites) have a puzzling orbital configuration with trapping in mean-motion resonances with every other pairs (Mimas-Tethys 4:2 and Enceladus-Dione 2:1). To reproduce their current orbital configuration on the…
With recent advances in the modeling of the solar system giant planets, rapid progress has been made in understanding the remaining questions pertaining to their formation and evolution. However, this progress has largely neglected the…
The age of the rings and some of the moons of Saturn is an open question, and multiple lines of evidence point to a recent (few hundred Myr ago) cataclysm involving disruption of past moons. The main driver of the evolution of the Saturnian…
Tidal interactions between Saturn and its satellites play a crucial role in both the orbital migration of the satellites and the heating of their interiors. Therefore constraining the tidal dissipation of Saturn (here the ratio k2/Q) opens…
The building blocks of Titan and Enceladus are believed to have formed in a late-stage circumplanetary disk around Saturn. Evaluating the evolution of the abundances of volatile species in this disk as a function of the migration, growth,…
The stability of satellites in the solar system is affected by the so-called evection resonance. The moons of Saturn, in particular, exhibit a complex dynamical architecture in which co-orbital configurations occur, especially close to the…
The disruption of an icy moon in a collision with an interloping comet a few hundred million years ago is a simple way to create Saturn's rings. A ring parent moon with a mass comparable to Mimas could be trapped in mean motion resonance…
Using astrometric observations spanning more than a century and including a large set of Cassini data, we determine Saturn's tidal parameters through their current effects on the orbits of the eight main and four coorbital moons. We have…
Tidal effects in planetary systems are the main driver in the orbital migration of natural satellites. They result from physical processes occurring deep inside celestial bodies, whose effects are rarely observable from surface imaging. For…
The obliquity of a planet is the tilt between its equator and its orbital plane. Giant planets are expected to form with near-zero obliquities. After its formation, some dynamical mechanism must therefore have tilted Saturn up to its…
It is widely accepted that Titan and the mid-sized regular satellites around Saturn were formed in the circum-Saturn disk. Thus, if these mid-sized satellites were simply accreted by collisions of similar ice-rock satellitesimals in the…