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Latest Paper:
Science. 2011 May 6;332 (6030):711-3
21454755
SETI Institute, 189 Bernardo Avenue, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA. mshowalter@seti.org
Jupiter's main ring shows vertical corrugations reminiscent of those recently detected in the rings of Saturn. The Galileo spacecraft imaged a pair of superimposed ripple patterns in 1996 and again in 2000. These patterns behave as two independent spirals, each winding up at a rate defined by Jupiter's gravity field. The dominant pattern originated between July and October 1994, when the entire ring was tilted by about 2 kilometers. We associate this with the Shoemaker-Levy 9 impacts of July 1994. New Horizons images still show this pattern 13 years later and suggest that subsequent events may also have tilted the ring. Impacts by comets or their dust streams are regular occurrences in planetary rings, altering them in ways that remain detectable decades later.
J N Cuzzi,
J A Burns,
S Charnoz,
R N Clark,
J E Colwell,
L Dones,
L W Esposito,
G Filacchione,
R G French,
M M Hedman,
S Kempf,
E A Marouf,
C D Murray,
P D Nicholson,
C C Porco,
J Schmidt,
M R Showalter,
L J Spilker,
J N Spitale,
R Srama,
M Sremcevic,
M S Tiscareno,
J Weiss
Ames Research Center, NASA, Mail Stop 245-3, Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000, USA.
We review our understanding of Saturn's rings after nearly 6 years of observations by the Cassini spacecraft. Saturn's rings are composed mostly of water ice but also contain an undetermined reddish contaminant. The rings exhibit a range of structure across many spatial scales; some of this involves the interplay of the fluid nature and the self-gravity of innumerable orbiting centimeter- to meter-sized particles, and the effects of several peripheral and embedded moonlets, but much remains unexplained. A few aspects of ring structure change on time scales as short as days. It remains unclear whether the vigorous evolutionary processes to which the rings are subject imply a much younger age than that of the solar system. Processes on view at Saturn have parallels in circumstellar disks.
Mark R Showalter,
Andrew F Cheng,
Harold A Weaver,
S Alan Stern,
John R Spencer,
Henry B Throop,
Emma M Birath,
Debi Rose,
Jeffrey M Moore
The dusty jovian ring system must be replenished continuously from embedded source bodies. The New Horizons spacecraft has performed a comprehensive search for kilometer-sized moons within the system, which might have revealed the larger members of this population. No new moons were found, however, indicating a sharp cutoff in the population of jovian bodies smaller than 8-kilometer-radius Adrastea. However, the search revealed two families of clumps in the main ring: one close pair and one cluster of three to five. All orbit within a brighter ringlet just interior to Adrastea. Their properties are very different from those of the few other clumpy rings known; the origin and nonrandom distribution of these features remain unexplained, but resonant confinement by Metis may play a role.
Careful reprocessing of the Voyager images reveals that the Uranìan lambda ring has marked longitudinal variations in brightness comparable in magnitude to those in Saturn's F ring and Neptune's Adams ring. The ring's variations show a dominant five-cycle (72-degree) periodicity, although additional structure down to scales of about 0.5 degree is also present. The ring's shape is defined by a small overall eccentricity plus a six-cycle (60-degree) sinusoidal variation of radial amplitude around 4 kilometers. Both of these properties can be explained by the resonant perturbations of a moon at a semimajor axis of 56,479 kilometers, but no known moon orbits at this location. Unfortunately, the mass required suggests that such a body should have been imaged by Voyager.
Science. 2007 Aug 23;:
17717152
Cit:1
The rings of Uranus are oriented edge-on to Earth in 2007 for the first time since their 1977 discovery. This provides a rare opportunity to observe their dark (unlit) side, where dense rings darken to near invisibility, but faint rings become much brighter. We present a ground-based infrared image of the unlit side of the rings that shows that the system has changed dramatically since previous views. A broad cloud of faint material permeates the system, but is not correlated with the well-known narrow rings or with the embedded dust belts imaged by Voyager. Although some differences can be explained by the unusual viewing angle, we conclude that the dust distribution within the system has changed significantly since the 1986 Voyager spacecraft encounter and occurs on much larger scales than has been seen in other planetary systems.
Science. 2006 Apr 7;312 (5770):92-4
16601188
Cit:2
Astronomy Department, 601 Campbell Hall, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720, USA. imke@astron.berkeley.edu
We compared near-infrared observations of the recently discovered outer rings of Uranus with Hubble Space Telescope results. We find that the inner ring, R/2003 U 2, is red, whereas the outer ring, R/2003 U 1, is very blue. Blue is an unusual color for rings; Saturn's enigmatic E ring is the only other known example. By analogy to the E ring, R/2003 U 1 is probably produced by impacts into the embedded moon Mab, which apparently orbits at a location where nongravitational perturbations favor the survival and spreading of submicron-sized dust. R/2003 U 2 more closely resembles Saturn's G ring, which is red, a typical color for dusty rings.
Science. 2005 Dec 22;:
16373533
Cit:2
Astronomy Unit, Queen Mary, University of London, London E1 4NS, UK. c.d.murray@qmul.ac.uk
Deep exposures of Uranus taken with the Hubble Space Telescope reveal two small moons and two faint rings. All orbit outside of Uranus's previously known (main) ring system, but interior to the large, classical moons. The outer new moon, U XXVI Mab, orbits at roughly twice the radius of the main rings and shares its orbit with a dust ring. The second moon, U XXVII Cupid, orbits just interior to the satellite Belinda. A second ring falls between the orbits of Portia and Rosalind, in a region with no known source bodies. Collectively, these constitute a densely packed, rapidly varying, and possibly unstable dynamical system.
SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA. mshowalter@seti.org
Science. 2005 May 13;308:975-8
15894528
Cit:9
F M Flasar,
R K Achterberg,
B J Conrath,
P J Gierasch,
V G Kunde,
C A Nixon,
G L Bjoraker,
D E Jennings,
P N Romani,
A A Simon-Miller,
B Bézard,
A Coustenis,
P G J Irwin,
N A Teanby,
J Brasunas,
J C Pearl,
M E Segura,
R C Carlson,
A Mamoutkine,
P J Schinder,
A Barucci,
R Courtin,
T Fouchet,
D Gautier,
E Lellouch,
A Marten,
R Prangé,
S Vinatier,
D F Strobel,
S B Calcutt,
P L Read,
F W Taylor,
N Bowles,
R E Samuelson,
G S Orton,
L J Spilker,
T C Owen,
J R Spencer,
M R Showalter,
C Ferrari,
M M Abbas,
F Raulin,
S Edgington,
P Ade,
E H Wishnow
Temperatures obtained from early Cassini infrared observations of Titan show a stratopause at an altitude of 310 kilometers (and 186 kelvin at 15 degrees S). Stratospheric temperatures are coldest in the winter northern hemisphere, with zonal winds reaching 160 meters per second. The concentrations of several stratospheric organic compounds are enhanced at mid- and high northern latitudes, and the strong zonal winds may inhibit mixing between these latitudes and the rest of Titan. Above the south pole, temperatures in the stratosphere are 4 to 5 kelvin cooler than at the equator. The stratospheric mole fractions of methane and carbon monoxide are (1.6 +/- 0.5) x 10(-2) and (4.5 +/- 1.5) x 10(-5), respectively.
F M Flasar,
R K Achterberg,
B J Conrath,
J C Pearl,
G L Bjoraker,
D E Jennings,
P N Romani,
A A Simon-Miller,
V G Kunde,
C A Nixon,
B Bézard,
G S Orton,
L J Spilker,
J R Spencer,
P G J Irwin,
N A Teanby,
T C Owen,
J Brasunas,
M E Segura,
R C Carlson,
A Mamoutkine,
P J Gierasch,
P J Schinder,
M R Showalter,
C Ferrari,
A Barucci,
R Courtin,
A Coustenis,
T Fouchet,
D Gautier,
E Lellouch,
A Marten,
R Prangé,
D F Strobel,
S B Calcutt,
P L Read,
F W Taylor,
N Bowles,
R E Samuelson,
M M Abbas,
F Raulin,
P Ade,
S Edgington,
S Pilorz,
B Wallis,
E H Wishnow
National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)/Goddard Space Flight Center, Code 693, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA. f.m.flasar@nasa.gov
Stratospheric temperatures on Saturn imply a strong decay of the equatorial winds with altitude. If the decrease in winds reported from recent Hubble Space Telescope images is not a temporal change, then the features tracked must have been at least 130 kilometers higher than in earlier studies. Saturn's south polar stratosphere is warmer than predicted from simple radiative models. The C/H ratio on Saturn is seven times solar, twice Jupiter's. Saturn's ring temperatures have radial variations down to the smallest scale resolved (100 kilometers). Diurnal surface temperature variations on Phoebe suggest a more porous regolith than on the jovian satellites.
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