Dust Sources of Saturn's E Ring
Abstract
The recent detection of a dust plume at Enceladus' south pole sheds new light on the origin of the E ring of Saturn. The particles probably condense from gas vents escaping from a system of cracks covering the south pole that appears unusually hot in the Cassini infrared experiments. The main fraction of the E ring dust is created in these gas vents. Still, significant amounts of dust should originate from grains ejected by hypervelocity impacts of E ring particles (ERPs), or alternatively, of interplanetary dust grains (IDPs) on the Saturnian moons embedded in the E ring. We estimate the contributions of impactor -ejecta created dust at these various satellites in the ring, relative to the production rate of grains in the plume at Enceladus. Furthermore, we compare the amount of dust created by both projectile families - ERPs and IDPs - and predict that one can clearly discriminate between the ejecta raised by either projectile families in the data of the Cassini dust detector (CDA) collected at close flybys with the moons embedded in the E ring.
- Publication:
-
European Planetary Science Congress 2006
- Pub Date:
- 2006
- Bibcode:
- 2006epsc.conf..533S