EAS206 Lecture 18: EAS 206 - Lecture 18 - Saturn
Saturn
• Cassini-Huygens
o Do’t eed to worry aout 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 kow 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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