EAS206 Lecture 18: EAS 206 - Lecture 18 - Saturn

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Saturn
Cassini-Huygens
o Do’t eed to worry aout all the instruments
o Worry about the information it gathered on its mission (what can it do?)
RADAR (SAR)
o Huygens
Acoustic sounder
Liquids on Titan!
Probe parachuted down for 2.5 hours
Once on the ground, lasted for an hour and 10 minutes
Objectives
Do’t eed to kow this
Saturn Ring System
RINGS
o Most prominent feature
o Reflect well, which is why we can see them
How much total mass?
o If you gather it all up = make a moon that is ~100 km across
Divisions
Shepherd Moons
o Called shepherd because they herd the particles (interact with them)
o Keeps them from spreading out too much (F ring)
The Saturn System
o Anything that is close to Saturn itself is generally very small
Something is happening that is causing larger objects to not exist in that
area (hence the smaller particles and dust)
Origin of the Rings
1. Roche limit (before something gets torn apart) depends on the actual strength of
the material the satellite is made from (rocky is better than brittle ice)
DYNAMIC PROCESS (rings are YOUNG)
2. Fragmentation
PROBLEM: Saturn would prevent any accretion from happening
3. Accretionary Remnant ( X )
o Rings are old (stuff leftover from the original formation of Saturn)
o Some clues from Jupiter, where faint rings are forming in Jupiter
o Direct relationship between the small moons and the ring materials
E ring = Material from Enceladus (spewing out material) = process is
replenishing
o Of these 3 theories, #1 or #2; rings are recent, replenished from time to time by
impacts or supplied by the moons [#2 is the MOST LIKELY]
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