Saturn's E Ring and Production of the Neutral Torus
โ Scribed by S. Jurac; R.E. Johnson; J.D. Richardson
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2001
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 197 KB
- Volume
- 149
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0019-1035
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
โฆ Synopsis
Recent Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of the densities of neutral OH molecules that coexist with and are precursors of the plasma ions have constrained models for the plasma sources. An orbital simulation model of the evolution of H 2 O molecules emitted from the satellites and the E ring is employed to put additional constraints on the possible plasma/neutral sources in Saturn's magnetosphere. We find that a large H 2 O source concentrated near the orbit of Enceladus (of the order 10 27 H 2 O molecules/s) is needed to account for the observed OH neutral cloud. We suggest that a large amount of optically unobserved material near Enceladus could provide the "missing" H 2 O source. A Monte-Carlo collisional transport code for sputtering of ice surfaces is developed and applied to the E-ring grains. Grain lifetimes are found to be short (โผ50 years for 1-ยตm grains and only a few years for 0.1-ยตm grains), so grains must be resupplied regularly to keep the E ring in the present state. Orbital collisions between icy fragments, possibly remains of a disrupted satellite near Enceladus, are the suggested mechanism for replenishing the E ring.
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
main rings are viewed edge-on and so reflect very little sunlight toward Earth. In this note, we discuss the first ground-based detection of Saturn's We report the first ground-based detection of Saturn's G G ring and the first infrared images of the E ring. ring, together with the first infrared im
We both test and offer an alternative to a meteoroid bombardment model (M. R. Showalter 1998, Science 282, 1099-1102) and suggest that anomalous localized brightenings in the F ring observed by Voyager result from disruptive collisions involving poorly consolidated moonlets, or "rubble piles." This