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Related papers: Memoirs of a giant planet

200 papers

We present a review of Saturn's interior structure and thermal evolution, with a particular focus on work in the past 5 years. Data from the Cassini mission, including a precise determination of the gravity field from the Grand Finale…

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…

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…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2015-05-14 Sebastien Charnoz , Luke Dones , Larry W. Esposito , Paul R. Estrada , Matthew M. Hedman

Spacecraft observations of Saturn's rings show evidence of an active aggregation-disaggregation process triggered by periodic influences from the nearby moons. This leads to clumping and break-up of the ring particles at time-scales of the…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2013-01-16 Pedro J. Torres , Prasanna Madhusudhanan , Larry W. Esposito

The last 22.5 orbits of the Cassini mission brought the spacecraft to less than 3000 km from Saturn's 1-bar surface. These close encounters offered an unprecedented view of Saturn's magnetic field, including contributions from the internal…

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…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2015-06-11 Hanno Rein , Henrik Latter

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…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2026-02-04 Yubo Su , Janosz W. Dewberry , Roberto Tejada Arevalo , Ankan Sur , Adam Burrows

To explore the formation and properties of Saturn's G ring, we study the dynamics of micron-sized dust particles originating from the arc of debris near the inner edge of the ring. The dynamical evolution of particles due to various…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2025-07-22 Zhenghan Chen , Xiaodong Liu , Kun Yang

Saturn's F ring is subject to dynamic structural changes over short periods. Among the observed phenomena are diffuse extended bright clumps (ECs) ~ 3-40 degrees in longitudinal extent. These ECs appear, evolve, and disappear over a span of…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2014-08-13 Robert S. French , Shannon K. Hicks , Mark R. Showalter , Adrienne K. Antonsen , Douglas R. Packard

We identify multiple periodic dusty structures in Saturn's Roche Division, a faint region spanning the $\sim3000$ km between the A and F rings. The locations and extent of these features vary over Cassini's tour of the Saturn system, being…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2019-04-24 R. O. Chancia , M. M. Hedman , S. W. H. Cowley , G. Provan , S. -Y. Ye

The ejecta discharged by impacting meteorites can redistribute a planetary ring's mass and angular momentum. This `ballistic transport' of ring properties instigates a linear instability that could generate the 100--1000-km undulations…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2015-10-14 Henrik Latter , Gordon Ogilvie , Marie Chupeau

Saturn's magnetospheric magnetic field, planetary radio emissions, plasma populations and magnetospheric structure are all known to be modulated at periods close to the assumed rotation period of the planetary interior. These oscillations…

The $\mu$ and $\nu$ rings of Uranus form a secondary ring-moon system with the satellites Puck, Mab,Portia, and Rosalind. These rings are tenuous and dominated by micrometric particles, which can be strongly disturbed by the solar radiation…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2013-07-12 R. Sfair

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.…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2023-05-24 R. H. Durisen , Paul. R. Estrada

Since 2004, observations of Saturn's F ring have revealed that the ring's core is surrounded by structures with radial scales of hundreds of kilometers, called "spirals" and "jets". Gravitational scattering by nearby moons was suggested as…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Sebastien Charnoz

Small (~50km scale), irregular features seen in Cassini images to be emanating from Saturn's F ring have been termed mini-jets by Attree et al. (2012). One particular mini-jet was tracked over half an orbital period, revealing its evolution…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2017-12-21 Nicholas O. Attree , Carl D. Murray , Gareth A. Williams , Nicholas J. Cooper

We find an interesting fact that fictitious retrograde co-orbitals of Saturn, or small bodies inside the retrograde 1:1 resonance with Saturn, are highly unstable in our numerical simulations. It is shown that in the presence of Jupiter,…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2019-07-31 Yukun Huang , Miao Li , Junfeng Li , Shengping Gong

Context: As a result of Titan's migration and Saturn's probable capture in secular spin-orbit resonance, recent works show that Saturn's obliquity could be steadily increasing today and may reach large values in the next billions of years.…

Earth and Planetary Astrophysics · Physics 2021-10-20 Melaine Saillenfest , Giacomo Lari

A Uranus orbiter would be well positioned to detect the planet's free oscillation modes, whose frequencies can resolve questions about Uranus's weakly constrained interior. We calculate the spectra that may manifest in resonances with ring…

The atmospheres of Jupiter and Saturn exhibit strong and stable zonal winds. How deep the winds penetrate unabated into each planet is unknown. Our investigation favors shallow winds. It consists of two parts. The first part makes use of an…

Astrophysics · Physics 2009-11-13 Junjun Liu , Peter Goldreich , David Stevenson