Saturn's F ring is intermittently shepherded by Prometheus.
Sci Adv
; 10(19): eadl6601, 2024 May 10.
Article
en En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-38728405
ABSTRACT
One of the stranger planetary rings is Saturn's narrow, clumpy F ring, lying just outside the main rings, in a region disturbed by chaotic orbital dynamics. We show that the F ring has a stable "true core" that dominates its mass and is confined into discontinuous short arcs of particles larger than a few millimeters in radius. The more obvious micron-size particles seen in images, outlining and obscuring the true core, contribute only a small fraction of its mass. We found that these arcs of large particles orbit Saturn in a specific corotational resonance with the nearby 100-kilometer diameter ringmoon Prometheus, which stabilizes the F ring material and allows it to persist within the disturbed region for decades or longer. Toward the end of the observing period, a small chaotic glitch in the orbit of Prometheus temporarily disrupted the confinement, but the arcs seem to be able to adapt.
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01-internacional
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MEDLINE
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Sci Adv
Año:
2024
Tipo del documento:
Article
País de afiliación:
Estados Unidos