Explaining why the uranian satellites have equatorial prograde orbits despite the large planetary obliquity
Abstract
We show that the existence of prograde equatorial satellites is consistent with a collisional tilting scenario for Uranus. In fact, if the planet was surrounded by a proto-satellite disk at the time of the tilting and a massive ring of material was temporarily placed inside the Roche radius of the planet by the collision, the proto-satellite disk would have started to precess incoherently around the equator of the planet, up to a distance greater than that of Oberon. Collisional damping would then have collapsed it into a thin equatorial disk, from which the satellites eventually formed. The fact that the orbits of the satellites are prograde requires Uranus to have had a non-negligible initial obliquity (comparable to that of Neptune) before it was finally tilted to 98°.
- Publication:
-
Icarus
- Pub Date:
- June 2012
- DOI:
- 10.1016/j.icarus.2012.03.025
- arXiv:
- arXiv:1208.4685
- Bibcode:
- 2012Icar..219..737M
- Keywords:
-
- Astrophysics - Earth and Planetary Astrophysics
- E-Print:
- Icarus, 219, 737 (2012)