OCCULTATION OBSERVATIONS OF SATURN'S B RING AND CASSINI DIVISION
- Astronomy Department, Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA 02481 (United States)
- San Jose State University, San Jose, CA 95192 (United States)
The outer edge of Saturn's B ring is strongly affected by the nearby 2:1 inner Lindblad resonance of Mimas and is distorted approximately into a centered elliptical shape, which at the time of the Voyager 1 and 2 encounters was oriented with its periapse toward Mimas. Subsequent observations have shown that the actual situation is considerably more complex. We present a complete set of historical occultation measurements of the B-ring edge, including the 1980 Voyager 1 and 1981 Voyager 2 radio and stellar occultations, the 1989 occultation of 28 Sgr, two independently analyzed occultations observed with the Hubble Space Telescope in 1991 and 1995, and a series of ring profiles from 12 diametric (ansa-to-ansa) occultations observed in 2005, using the Cassini Radio Science Subsystem (RSS). After making an approximate correction for systematic errors in the reconstructed spacecraft trajectories, we obtain orbit fits to features in the rings with rms residuals well under 1 km, in most cases. Fits to the B-ring edge in the RSS data reveal a systematic variation in the maximum optical depth at the very edge of the ring as a function of its orbital radius. We compare the B-ring measurements to an m = 2 distortion aligned with Mimas, and show that there have been substantial phase shifts over the past 25 years. Finally, we present freely precessing equatorial elliptical models for 16 features in the Cassini Division. The inner edges of the gaps are generally eccentric, whereas the outer edges are nearly circular, with ae < 0.5 km.
- OSTI ID:
- 21301196
- Journal Information:
- Astronomical Journal (New York, N.Y. Online), Vol. 139, Issue 4; Other Information: DOI: 10.1088/0004-6256/139/4/1649; Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1538-3881
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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