Size of Self-Gravity Wakes from Cassini UVIS Tracking Occultations and Ring Transparency Statistics
Abstract
We compare two methods for determining the size of self-gravity wakes in Saturn's rings. Analysis of gaps seen in UVIS occultations gives a power law distribution from 10-100m (Rehnberg etal 2017). Excess variance from UVIS occultations can be related to characteristic clump widths, a method which extends the work of Showalter and Nicholson (1990) to more arbitrary shadow distributions. In the middle A ring, we use results from Colwell etal (2017) for the variance and results from Jerousek etal (2016) for the relative size of gaps and wakes to estimate the wake width consistent with the excess variance observed there. Our method gives: W= sqrt (A) * E/T2 * (1+ S/W)Where A is the area observed by UVIS in an integration period, E is the measured excess variance above Poisson statistics, T is the mean transparency, and S and W are the separation and width of self-gravity wakes in the granola bar model of Colwell etal (2006). We find: W 10m and infer the wavelength of the fastest growing instability lamdaT = S + W 30m. This is consistent with the calculation of the Toomre wavelength from the surface mass density of the A ring, and with the highest resolution UVIS star occultations.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.P23B2721E
- Keywords:
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- 2129 Interplanetary dust;
- INTERPLANETARY PHYSICS;
- 6213 Dust;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS;
- 6245 Meteors;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS;
- 6265 Planetary rings;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS