Related papers: Particles co-orbital to Janus and Epimetheus: a fi…
Voyager 2 images confirmed the presence of ring arcs around Neptune. These structures need a confinement mechanism to constrain their spreading due to collisions, dissipative forces, and differential keplerian motion. Here we report the…
In this work, we model the radial density profile of the outer A ring of Saturn observed with Cassini cameras (Tiscareno & Harris 2018): An axisymmetric diffusion model has been developed, accounting for the outward viscous flow of the ring…
During the thirteen years in orbit around Saturn before its final plunge, the Cassini spacecraft provided more than ten thousand astrometric measurements. Such large amounts of accurate data enable the search for extremely faint signals in…
The thermal inertia values of Saturn's main rings (the A, B, and C rings and the Cassini division) are derived by applying our thermal model to azimuthally scanned spectra taken by the Cassini Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS). Model…
The geologically active south pole of Enceladus generates a plume of micron-sized particles, which likely form Saturn's tenuous E-ring extending from the orbit of Mimas to Titan. Interactions between these particles and satellites have been…
Nowadays, astronomers want to observe gaps in exozodiacal disks to confirm the presence of exoplanets, or even make actual images of these companions. Four hundred and fifty years ago, Jean-Dominique Cassini did a similar study on a closer…
During the Grand Finale stage of the Cassini mission, organic-rich ring material was discovered to be flowing into Saturn's equatorial upper atmosphere at a surprisingly large rate. Through a series of photochemical models, we have examined…
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,…
The origin and long-term evolution of Saturn's rings is still an unsolved problem in modern planetary science. In this chapter we review the current state of our knowledge on this long-standing question for the main rings (A, Cassini…
The Cassini spacecraft collects high resolution images of the saturnian satellites and reveals the surface of these new worlds. The shape and rotation of the satellites can be determined from the Cassini Imaging Science Subsystem data,…
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 this paper, we introduce a simplified model to understand the location of Saturn's F ring. The model is a planar restricted five-body problem defined by the gravitational field of Saturn, including its second zonal harmonic $J_2$, the…
The zeta ring is the innermost component of the Uranian ring system. It is of scientific interest because its morphology changed significantly between the Voyager 2 encounter in 1986 and subsequent Earth-based observations around 2007. It…
The leading face of Saturn's moon Iapetus, Cassini Regio, has an albedo only one tenth that on its trailing side. The origin of this enigmatic dichotomy has been debated for over forty years, but with new data, a clearer picture is…
The lightning activity in Saturn's atmosphere has been monitored by Cassini for more than six years. The continuous observations of the radio signatures called SEDs (Saturn Electrostatic Discharges) combine favorably with imaging…
We present an analysis of data about Saturn's atmosphere from Cassini's Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), focusing on the meteorology of the features seen in the 5-micron spectral window. We present VIMS mosaics and discuss…
Saturn is ringing weakly. Exquisite data from the Cassini mission reveal the presence of f-mode oscillations as they excite density waves in Saturn's rings. These oscillations have displacement amplitudes of order a metre on Saturn's…
The appearance of debris disks around distant stars depends upon the scattering/phase function (SPF) of the material in the disk. However, characterizing the SPFs of these extrasolar debris disks is challenging because only a limited range…
Janus and Epimetheus are two moons of Saturn with very peculiar motions. As they orbit around Saturn on quasi-coplanar and quasi-circular trajectories whose radii are only 50 km apart (less than their respective diameters), every four…
Saturn's rings consist of a huge number of water ice particles, with a tiny addition of rocky material. They form a flat disk, as the result of an interplay of angular momentum conservation and the steady loss of energy in dissipative…