An Evolving View of Saturn's Dynamic Rings

J. N. Cuzzi 1, * J. A. Burns 2 S. Charnoz 3 R. N. Clark 4 J. E. Colwell 5 L. Dones 6 L. W. Esposito 7 G. Filacchione 8 R. G. French 9 M. M. Hedman 2 S. Kempf 10 E. A. Marouf 11 C. D. Murray 12 P. D. Nicholson 2 C. C. Porco 13 Julien Schmidt 14 M. R. Showalter 15 L. J. Spilker 16 J. N. Spitale 13 R. Srama 10 M. Sremčević 7 M. S. Tiscareno 2 J. Weiss 13, 17
* Corresponding author
1 ARC - NASA Ames Research Center
2 Department of Astronomy [Ithaca]
3 AIM - UMR 7158 - UMR E 9005 - Astrophysique Interprétation Modélisation
4 US Geological Survey [Denver]
5 Department of Physics
6 Department of Space Studies [Boulder]
7 LASP - Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics [Boulder]
8 IASF-Roma - Istituto di Astrofisica Spaziale e Fisica cosmica - Roma
9 Astronomy Department [Wellesley]
10 MPIK - Max-Planck-Institut für Kernphysik
11 Electrical Engineering Department
12 AU - Astronomy Unit
13 CICLOPS - Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations
14 Institute for Physics and Astronomy
15 SETI Institute
16 JPL - Jet Propulsion Laboratory
17 Carleton College
Abstract : We review our understanding of Saturn's rings after nearly 6 years of observations by the Cassini spacecraft. Saturn's rings are composed mostly of water ice but also contain an undetermined reddish contaminant. The rings exhibit a range of structure across many spatial scales; some of this involves the interplay of the fluid nature and the self-gravity of innumerable orbiting centimeter- to meter-sized particles, and the effects of several peripheral and embedded moonlets, but much remains unexplained. A few aspects of ring structure change on time scales as short as days. It remains unclear whether the vigorous evolutionary processes to which the rings are subject imply a much younger age than that of the solar system. Processes on view at Saturn have parallels in circumstellar disks.
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J. N. Cuzzi, J. A. Burns, S. Charnoz, R. N. Clark, J. E. Colwell, et al.. An Evolving View of Saturn's Dynamic Rings. Science, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2010, 327 (5972), pp.1470-1475. ⟨10.1126/science.1179118⟩. ⟨cea-00865799⟩

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