相关论文: On the origin of irregular structure in Saturn's r…

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…

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…

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…

Saturn's diffuse E ring consists of many tiny (micron and sub-micron) grains of water ice distributed between the orbits of Mimas and Titan. Various gravitational and non-gravitational forces perturb these particles' orbits, causing the…

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…

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…

The origin of rings around giant planets remains elusive. Saturn's rings are massive and made of 90-95% of water ice. In contrast, the much less massive rings of Uranus and Neptune are dark and likely to have higher rock fraction. Here we…

The origin and evolution of Saturn's rings is critical to understanding the Saturnian system as a whole. Here, we discuss the physical and chemical composition of the rings, as a foundation for evolutionary models described in subsequent…

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…

This study is motivated by the observation, based on photographs from the Cassini mission, that Saturn's rings have a fractal structure in radial direction. Accordingly, two questions are considered: (1) What Newtonian mechanics argument in…

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…

The origin of Saturn's rings has been debated for decades. Measurements from Voyager and Cassini have suggested that the rings could be as young as ~100 Myr and composed of nearly pure water ice. Several scenarios have been proposed to…

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,…

Saturn's rings are composed of icy grains, most in the mm to m size ranges, undergoing several collisions per orbit. Their collective behaviour generates a remarkable array of structure over many orders of magnitude, much of it not well…

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…

Spacecraft and ground-based observations show that the main rings of Saturn lack particles larger than 10 m. Tidal or collisional destruction of satellites/comets have been proposed as the origin of the main rings; however, Saturn's tide…

We study the B ring's complex optical depth structure. The source of this structure may be the complex dynamics of the Keplerian shear and the self-gravity of the ring particles. The outcome of these dynamic effects depends sensitively on…

We investigate the formation of spatial structure in dense, self-gravitating particle systems such as Saturn's B-ring through local $N$-body simulations to clarify the intrinsic physics based on individual particle motion. In such a system,…

Images obtained by the Cassini spacecraft between 2012 and 2015 reveal a periodic brightness variation in a region of Saturn's D ring that previously appeared to be rather featureless. Furthermore, the intensity and radial wavenumber of…