Sfair’s blog

After a long time my Master’s Thesis is online. In this work, entitled “Analysis of the Saturn’s F-ring Region”, we analyse the influence of Prometheus and Atlas on F-ring particles and also on two diffuse rings.

The text is available in PDF format (4.3MB) (I’ll convert to djvu soon). You can download it here (90 pages, pt_br).
Comments, suggestions and job proposals are welcome

The abstract:

The Cassini-Huygens arrival into the Saturnian system brought a large amount of data about the satellites and rings. Two diffuse rings were found in the region between the A ring and Prometheus. R/2004 S1 is coorbital to Atlas and R/2004 S2 is close to Prometheus.
In this work we analyse the closest approach between Prometheus and both rings. As a result we have found that at each period of the satellite a gap is created in the inner F-ring’s strand and waves are formed in the further strands. Prometheus also scatters particles from F-ring and a similar behaviour occurs in the R/2004 S2 ring, with gap formation and particle scattering. The numerical simulations has shown that Prometheus does not influence the R/2004 S1 ring but Atlas is responsible for the formation of three regimes in this ring, as expected for a satellite embedded in a ring.
The determination of Lindblad and corotation resonances showed that there is an overlap of resonances in the region of the R/2004 S2 ring. Furthermore, the computation of the Lyapunov Characteristic Exponent has revealed that the R/2004 S2 ring lies in a chaotic region.
When solar radiation pressure effects are considered, micrometre-sized particles from F-ring decay and collide with Prometheus, except for few particles of 1µm which cross Prometheu’s orbit and reach the R/2004 S2 region. The solar radiation pressure affects the behavior of the R/2004 S1 ring leading to collisions between Atlas and these small particles, although some of them decay in direction of Saturn.

Keywords: F-ring, planetary rings dynamics, resonances, Lyapunov Characteristic Exponent, solar radiation pressure

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