The Bright Side of Saturn's Gravity
Abstract
Since the Cassini spacecraft entered into orbit around Saturn in 2004, it has made many surprising discoveries about the planet and its moons. However, only during its Grand Finale phase when it dives inside Saturn's rings, it comes close enough to the planet to perform precise measurements of the planet's gravitational field. Such measurements tell us about the planet's interior mass distribution and thus provide us with information about its current interior structure, its evolution and possibly also about processes that triggered its formation. The interpretation of gravity data relies on interior models and it often not unique. In some cases, new gravity measurements are so unusual that they cannot be explained with any of the existing models. Apparently, Cassini's recent gravity measurements fall in this category. In this talk, we discuss how existing Saturn interior models need to be revised in order to match the Cassini data. Our preliminary models yield a good match to the gravity coefficients J2, J4, and J6.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.P11G..05M
- Keywords:
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- 5714 Gravitational fields;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: FLUID PLANETS;
- 5724 Interiors;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: FLUID PLANETS;
- 5734 Magnetic fields and magnetism;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: FLUID PLANETS;
- 6275 Saturn;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS