Related papers: Memoirs of a giant planet
During the past few years, both the Cassini mission at Saturn and the Juno mission at Jupiter, provided measurements with unprecedented accuracy of the gravity and magnetic fields of the two gas giants. Using the gravity measurements, it…
The co-orbital satellites of Saturn, Janus and Epimetheus, swap radial positions every 4.0 years. Since \textit{Cassini} has been in orbit about Saturn, this has occurred on 21 January in 2006, 2010, and 2014. We describe the effects of…
We study the relationship of zonal gravity coefficients, J_2n, zonal winds, and axial moment of inertia (MoI) by constructing models for the interiors of giant planets. We employ the nonperturbative concentric Maclaurin spheroid (CMS)…
We examine Saturn's atmosphere with observations from ground-based telescopes and Hubble Space Telescope (HST). We present a detailed analysis of observations acquired during 2018. A system of polar storms that appeared in the planet in…
The dynamical features of the irregular satellites of the giant planets argue against an in-situ formation and are strongly suggestive of a capture origin. Since the last detailed investigations of their dynamics, the total number of…
The gravity field of a giant planet is typically our best window into its interior structure and composition. Through comparison of a model planet's calculated gravitational potential with the observed potential, inferences can be made…
On 17 October 2008, the Cassini spacecraft crossed the southern sources of Saturn kilometric radiation (SKR), while flying along high-latitude nightside magnetic field lines. In situ measurements allowed us to characterize for the first…
We describe a model that accounts for the complex morphology of spiral density waves raised in Saturn's rings by the co-orbital satellites, Janus and Epimetheus. Our model may be corroborated by future Cassini observations of these…
We present an extensive data set of ~150 localized features from Cassini images of Saturn's Ring A, a third of which are demonstrated to be persistent by their appearance in multiple images, and half of which are resolved well enough to…
The Cassini mission unveiled the intense and diverse activity in Saturn's atmosphere: banded jets, waves, vortices, equatorial oscillations. To set the path towards a better understanding of those phenomena, we performed high-resolution…
Tidal transfer of angular momentum is expected to cause hot Jupiters to spiral into their host stars. Although the timescale for orbital decay is very uncertain, it should be faster for systems with larger and more evolved stars. Indeed, it…
Whistler-mode waves are generated within and can propagate upstream of collisionless shocks. They are known to play a role in electron thermodynamics/acceleration and, under certain conditions, are markedly observed as wave trains preceding…
The hot Saturn population exhibits a boundary in mass-radius space, such that no planets are observed at a density less than $\sim$0.1 g cm$^{-3}$. Yet, planet interior structure models can readily construct such objects as the natural…
Jupiter and Saturn play host to an impressive array of satellites, making it reasonable to suspect that similar systems of moons might exist around giant extrasolar planets. Furthermore, a significant population of such planets is known to…
Among the persistent questions raised by the existence of a rotational modulation of the Saturn Kilometric Radiation (SKR), the origin of the variability of the 10.8 hours SKR period at a 1% level over weeks to years remains intriguing.…
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 Cassini mission entered the Grand Finale phase in April 2017 and executed 22.5 highly inclined, close-in orbits around Saturn before diving into the planet on September 15th 2017. Here we present our analysis of the Cassini Grand Finale…
We conduct an in-depth analysis of statistical flow properties calculated from the reference high-resolution Saturn simulation obtained by global climate modelling in Part II. In the steady state of this reference simulation, strongly…
Observations from the Juno spacecraft show that Jupiter has a large dilute core rather than a compact core. To investigate the effects of different core structures on wave propagation and transmission in Jupiter's interior, we consider…
Anderson & Schubert (2007, Science,317,1384) proposed that Saturn's rotation period can be ascertained by minimizing the dynamic heights of the 100 mbar isosurface with respect to the geoid; they derived a rotation period of 10h 32m 35s. We…