TITLE:

AZIMUTHAL CHANNELS ON SATURN’S F RING AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP WITH PROMETHEUS

DATE:

Friday, October 3rd, 2008

TIME:

3:30 PM

LOCATION:

GMCS 214

SPEAKER:

Carlos E Chavez, Instituto de Astronomia Sede Ensenada, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico

ABSTRACT:

How Prometheus creates azimuthal structure in the F ring has been puzzling the scientists since these features were first observed during the Saturn Orbital Insertion (SOI) in July 2004. The SOI configuration is studied numerically with updated orbits, the plots obtained are in excellent agreement with the observed structures by Cassini spacecraft and with the numerical model we previously reported in Murray et al. 2005.
The approximate date for the antialignment configuration has been calculated, this enabled us to predict the possible appearance of the ring for this configuration. A new feature has been found (an “island”) that according to our numerical model should be visible during the antialignment configuration in late December 2009.
Then, since we noticed that the width of the channels depends strongly in the mass of Prometheus, the relationship between Prometheus mass and the width of the channels is found. To do so, the different masses of Prometheus that have been published are used here. The possible applications of this research, such as an independent method for determining Prometheus’ mass and F ring’s core strand mass, are discussed.

HOST:

Ricardo Carretero

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