Saturn

Through the cameras onboard the Hubble Space Telescope, the planet Saturn appears
much as our naked eyes would see it if it were only twice as far away as the Moon.

Saturn is in many ways similar to its larger neighbor, Jupiter, in terms of composition,
size, and structure. Yet when we study the two planets in detail, we find that there are
important differences as well. A comparison between Saturn and Jupiter provides us
with valuable insight into the structure and evolution of all the jovian worlds.

PHYSICAL PROPERTIES

 Saturn was the outermost planet known to ancient astronomers. Named after the
father of Jupiter in Greek and Roman mythology.
 Saturn orbits the Sun at almost twice the distance of Jupiter, with an orbital semi-
major axis of 9.54 A.U. (1430 million km) and an orbital eccentricity of 0.06.
 The planet's sidereal orbital period of 29.5 Earth years was the longest natural
unit of time known to the ancient world. At opposition, when Saturn is at its
brightest, it can lie within 8 A.U. of the Earth. However, its great distance from the
Sun still makes it considerably fainter than either Jupiter or Mars.
 Saturn ranks behind Jupiter, the inner planets, and several of the brightest stars
in the sky in terms of apparent brightness.
 Less than one-third the mass of Jupiter, Saturn is still an enormous planet, at
least by terrestrial standards. As with Jupiter, Saturn's many moons allowed an
accurate determination of the planet's mass long before the arrival of
the Pioneer and Voyager missions. Saturn's mass is 5.6 × 1026 kg, or 95 times
the mass of Earth.
 From Saturn's distance and angular size, the planet's radius--and hence the
average density--quickly follow. Saturn's equatorial radius is 60,000 km, or 9.4
Earth radii.
 The average density then is 700 kg/m3 (0.7 g/cm3)--less than the density of water
(which is 1000 kg/m3). Here we have a planet that would float in the ocean--if
Earth had one big enough! Saturn's low average density indicates that, like
Jupiter, it is composed primarily of hydrogen and helium. Saturn's lower mass,
however, results in lower interior pressure, so that these gases are less
compressed than in Jupiter's case.

ROTATION RATE

 Saturn, like Jupiter, rotates very rapidly and differentially. The rotation period of
the interior (as measured from magnetospheric outbursts, which trace the
rotation of the planet's core) and at high planetary latitudes (determined by
tracking weather features observed in Saturn's atmosphere) is 10 h40m.

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  The rotation period at the equator is 10 h14m, about 26 minutes shorter. Because
of Saturn's lower density, this rapid rotation makes Saturn even more flattened
than Jupiter.
 Saturn's polar radius is only 54,000 km, about 6000 km less than the equatorial
radius.
 Careful calculations show that this degree of flattening is less than would be
expected for a planet composed of hydrogen and helium
alone. Astronomers believe that Saturn also has a rocky core, perhaps twice the
mass of Jupiter's.

RINGS

 Saturn's best-known feature is its spectacular ring system. Because the rings lie
in the equatorial plane, their appearance (as seen from Earth) changes in a
seasonal manner, as shown in Figure.
 Saturn's rotation axis is significantly tilted with respect to the planet's orbit plane--
the axial tilt is 27°, similar to that of both Earth and Mars. Consequently, as
 Saturn orbits the Sun, the angles at which the rings are illuminated, and at which
we can view them, vary.
 When the planet's north or south pole is tipped toward the Sun, during Saturn's
summer or winter, the highly reflective rings are at their brightest. During Saturn's
spring and fall, the rings are close to being edge-on, both to the Sun and to us,
so that they seem to disappear altogether.
 One important deduction that we can make from this simple observation is that
the rings are very thin. In fact, we now know that their thickness is less than a
few hundred meters, even though they are over 200,000 km in diameter.

Over a period of several years, Saturn's rings change their appearance to terrestrial observers as the
tilted ring plane orbits the Sun. The first two photos are separated by about 1 year; the one at right was
taken a decade later. At some times during Saturn's orbital period of 29.5 Earth years, the rings seem to
disappear altogether as Earth passes through their plane and we view them edge-on.

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Saturn Atmosphere

Saturn Storm

 Saturn is much less colorful than Jupiter. Figure 12.2 shows yellowish and tan
cloud belts that parallel the equator, but these regions display less atmospheric
structure than do the belts on Jupiter.
 No obvious large "spots" or "ovals" adorn Saturn's cloud decks. Bands and
storms do exist, but the color changes that distinguish them on Jupiter are largely
absent on Saturn.

Saturn as seen by the Hubble Space Telescope in December 1994. At the time, a rare storm was visible
near the planet's equator. The bland colors are approximately true--that is, as the human eye sees things.
The insert shows the northern polar hood at an earlier time.

COMPOSITION AND COLORATION

 Astronomers first observed methane in the spectrum of sunlight reflected from

Saturn in the 1930s, about the same time that it was discovered on Jupiter.
 However, it was not until the early 1960s, when more sensitive observations
became possible, that gaseous ammonia was finally detected.
 In Saturn's cold upper atmosphere, most ammonia is in the solid or liquid form,
with relatively little of it present as a gas to absorb sunlight and create spectral
lines.
 Astronomers finally made the first accurate determinations of the hydrogen and
helium content in the late 1960s. These Earth-based measurements were later
confirmed with the arrival of the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft in the 1970s.
 Saturn's atmosphere consists of molecular hydrogen (92.4 percent), helium
(7.4 percent), methane (0.2 percent), and ammonia (0.02 percent). As on
Jupiter, hydrogen and helium dominate--these most abundant elements never
escaped from Saturn's atmosphere because of the planet's large mass and low
temperature.
 However, the fraction of helium on Saturn is far less than is observed on Jupiter
(where, as we saw, helium accounts for nearly 14 percent of the atmosphere) or
in the Sun.

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  It is extremely unlikely that the processes that created the outer planets
preferentially stripped Saturn of nearly half its helium or that the missing helium
somehow escaped from the planet while the hydrogen remained behind. Instead,
astronomers believe that at some time in Saturn's past, the heavier helium began
to sink toward the center of the planet, reducing its abundance in the outer layers
and leaving them relatively hydrogen-rich.
 Saturn's atmospheric structure compare with the corresponding diagram for
Jupiter.
 In many respects, Saturn's atmosphere is quite similar to Jupiter's, except that
the temperature is a little lower because of its greater distance from the Sun, and
because its clouds are somewhat thicker. Since Saturn, like Jupiter, lacks a solid
surface, we take the top of the troposphere as our reference level and set it to 0
km. The top of the visible clouds lies about 50 km below this level. As on Jupiter,
the clouds are arranged in three distinct layers, composed (in order of increasing
depth) of ammonia, ammonium hydrosulfide, and water ice. Above the clouds
lies a layer of haze formed by the action of sunlight on Saturn's upper
atmosphere.

The vertical structure of Saturn's atmosphere. As with Jupiter, there are several cloud layers, but Saturn's
weaker gravity results in thicker clouds and a more uniform appearance .

 The total thickness of the three cloud layers in Saturn's atmosphere is roughly
200 km, compared with about 80 km on Jupiter, and each layer is itself
somewhat thicker than its counterpart on Jupiter.
 The reason for this difference is Saturn's weaker gravity. At the haze level,
Jupiter's gravitational field is nearly two and a half times stronger than Saturn's,
so Jupiter's atmosphere is pulled much more powerfully toward the center of the
planet.
 Thus Jupiter's atmosphere is compressed more than Saturn's, and the clouds are
squeezed more closely together. The colors of Saturn's cloud layers, as well as
the planet's overall butterscotch hue, are due to the same basic cloud chemistry
as on Jupiter. However, because Saturn's clouds are thicker, there are few holes
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 and gaps in the top layer, so we rarely glimpse the more colorful levels below.
Instead, we see only different levels in the topmost layer, which leads to Saturn's
rather uniform appearance.

WEATHER

 Saturn has atmospheric wind patterns that are in many ways reminiscent of
those on Jupiter. There is an overall east-west zonal flow, which is apparently
quite stable.
 Computer-enhanced images of the planet that bring out more cloud contrast
(Figure) clearly show the existence of bands, oval storm systems, and turbulent
flow patterns looking very much like those seen on Jupiter.
 Scientists believe that Saturn's bands and storms have essentially the same
cause as does Jupiter's weather. Ultimately, the large-scale flows and small-
scale storm systems are powered by convective motion in Saturn's interior and
the planet's rapid rotation.

We see more structure in Saturn's cloud cover when computer processing and artificial color are used to
enhance the image contrast, as in these Voyager images of the entire gas ball and of a smaller,
magnified piece of it.

 The zonal flow on Saturn is considerably faster than on Jupiter and shows fewer
east-west alternations, as can be seen from Figure.
 The equatorial eastward jet stream, which reaches a speed of about 400 km/h on
Jupiter, moves at a brisk 1500 km/h on Saturn, and extends to much higher
latitudes.
 Not until latitudes 40° north and south of the equator are the first westward flows
found. Latitude 40°N also marks the strongest bands on Saturn and the most
obvious ovals and turbulent eddies.
 Astronomers still do not fully understand the reasons for the differences between
Jupiter's and Saturn's flow patterns.

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Winds on Saturn reach speeds even greater than those on Jupiter. As on Jupiter, the visible bands
appear to be associated with variations in wind speed.

 In September 1990, amateur astronomers detected a large white spot in

Saturn's southern hemisphere, just below the equator.
 In November of that year, when the Hubble Space Telescope imaged the
phenomenon in more detail, the spot had developed into a band of clouds
completely encircling the planet's equator. Some of these images are shown
in Figure.
 Astronomers believe that the white coloration arose from crystals of ammonia ice
formed when an upwelling plume of warm gas penetrated the cool upper cloud
layers. Because the crystals were freshly formed, they had not yet been affected
by the chemical reactions that color the planet's other clouds.

Circulating and evolving cloud systems on Saturn, imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in 1990.

 Such spots are rare on Saturn. The last one visible from Earth appeared in 1933,
but it was much smaller than the 1990 system and much shorter-lived, lasting for
only a few weeks.
 The turbulent flow patterns seen around the 1990 white spot have many
similarities to the flow around Jupiter's Great Red Spot.
 Scientists speculate that these white spots may represent long-lived weather
systems on Saturn and hope that routine observations of such temporary
atmospheric phenomena on the outer worlds will enable them to gain greater
insight into the dynamics of planetary atmospheres.

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INTERIOR STRUCTURE AND INTERNAL HEATING

Figure depicts Saturn's internal structure (compare Figure 11.9 for Jupiter). This picture
has been pieced together by planetary scientists using the same tools--
Voyager observations and theoretical modeling--that they used to infer Jupiter's inner
workings. Saturn has the same basic internal parts as Jupiter, but their relative
proportions are somewhat different: Saturn's metallic hydrogen layer is thinner, and its
core is larger. Because of its lower mass, Saturn has a less extreme core temperature,
density, and pressure than Jupiter. The central pressure is around a tenth of Jupiter's--
not too different from the pressure at the center of the Earth.

Saturn's internal structure, as deduced from Voyager observations and computer modeling.

 Infrared measurements indicate that Saturn's surface (that is, cloud-top)

temperature is 97 K, substantially higher than the temperature at which
Saturn would reradiate all the energy it receives from the Sun.
 In fact, Saturn radiates away almost three times more energy than it absorbs.
Thus Saturn, like Jupiter, has an internal energy source. But the explanation
behind Jupiter's excess energy--that the planet has a large reservoir of heat left
over from its formation--doesn't work for Saturn.
 Saturn is smaller than Jupiter and so must have cooled more rapidly--
rapidly enough that its original supply of energy has long ago been used
up. What then is happening inside Saturn to produce this extra heat?
 The explanation for this strange state of affairs also explains the mystery of
Saturn's apparent helium deficit. At the temperatures and high pressures
found in Jupiter's interior, liquid helium dissolves in liquid hydrogen.
 In Saturn, where the internal temperature is lower, the helium doesn't
dissolve so easily and tends to form droplets instead.
 The phenomenon is familiar to cooks, who know that it is generally much
easier to dissolve ingredients in hot liquids than in cold ones. Saturn
probably started out with a fairly uniform solution of helium dissolved in
hydrogen, but the helium tended to condense out of the surrounding
hydrogen, much as water vapor condenses out of Earth's atmosphere to
form a mist. The amount of helium condensation was greatest in the
planet's cool outer layers, where the mist turned to rain about 2 billion
years ago. A light shower of liquid helium has been falling through Saturn's

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 interior ever since. This helium precipitation is responsible for depleting
the outer layers of their helium content.
 So we can account for the unusually low abundance of helium in Saturn's
atmosphere--much of it has rained down to lower levels. But what about
the excess heating?
 The answer is simple: As the helium sinks toward the center, the planet's
gravitational field compresses it and heats it up. The gravitational energy
thus released is the source of Saturn's internal heat.
 In the distant future, the helium rain will stop, and Saturn will cool until its
outermost layers radiate only as much energy as they receive from the
Sun. When that happens, the temperature at Saturn's cloud tops will be 74
K. As Jupiter cools, it too may someday experience helium precipitation in
its interior, causing its surface temperature to rise once again.

MAGNETOSPHERIC ACTIVITY

 Saturn's electrically conducting interior and rapid rotation produce a strong

magnetic field and an extensive magnetosphere.
 Probably because of the considerably smaller mass of Saturn's metallic hydrogen
zone, the planet's basic magnetic field strength is only about 1/20 that of Jupiter,
or about 1000 times greater than that of the Earth.
 The magnetic field at Saturn's cloud tops (roughly 10 Earth radii from the planet's
center) is approximately the same as at Earth's surface. Voyager measurements
indicate that, unlike Jupiter and Earth, whose magnetic axes are slightly tilted,
Saturn's magnetic field is not inclined with respect to its rotation axis.
 Saturn's magnetosphere extends about 1 million km toward the Sun and is large
enough to contain the planet's ring system and the innermost 16 small moons.
Saturn's largest moon, Titan, orbits about 1.2 million km from the planet, so that it
is sometimes found just inside the outer magnetosphere and sometimes just
outside, depending on the intensity of the solar wind (which tends to push the
sunward side of the magnetosphere closer to the planet). Because no major
moons lie deep within Saturn's magnetosphere, the details of its structure are
different from those of Jupiter's magnetosphere. For example, there is no
equivalent of the Io plasma torus. Like Jupiter, Saturn emits radio waves, but as
luck would have it, they are reflected from the Earth's ionosphere (they lie in the
AM band) and were not detected until theVoyager craft approached the planet.

Saturn’s Ring system

THE VIEW FROM EARTH

 The most obvious aspect of Saturn's appearance is, of course, its planetary ring
system. Astronomers now know that all the jovian planets have rings, but
Saturn's are by far the brightest, the most extensive, and the most beautiful.

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  Galileo saw them first in 1610, but he did not recognize what he saw as a
planet with a ring. At the resolution of his small telescope, the rings looked like
bumps on the planet, or perhaps components of a triple system of some sort. In
1659, the Dutch astronomer Christian Huygens realized what the "bump" was--a
thin, flat ring, completely encircling the planet.
 In 1675, the French-Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini
discovered the first ring feature, a dark band about two-thirds of the way
out from the inner edge.
 From Earth, the band looks like a gap in the ring (an observation that is not too
far from the truth, although we now know that there is actually some ring
material within it). This "gap" is named the Cassini Division, in honor of its
discoverer.
 Careful observations from Earth show that the inner "ring" is in reality also
composed of two rings. From the outside in, the three rings are known
somewhat prosaically as the A, B, and C rings.
 The Cassini Division lies between A and B. A smaller gap, known as the Encke
Division, is found in the outer part of the A ring. Its width is 270 km. These ring
features are marked on Figur. No finer ring details are visible from our earthly
vantage point.
 Of the three main rings, the B ring is brightest, followed by the somewhat
fainter A ring, and then by the almost translucent C ring. A more complete
list of ring properties appears in Table.

Much fine structure, especially in the rings, appears in this image of Saturn taken while the Voyager
2 spacecraft approached the planet. (One of Saturn's moons appears at bottom, and a second casts a
black shadow on the cloud tops.) The banded structure of Saturn's atmosphere is also more evident in
this photograph. Note the absence of the vivid colors that characterize Jupiter's atmospheric cloud layers.

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WHAT ARE SATURN'S RINGS?

 A fairly obvious question--and one that perplexed the best scientists and
mathematicians on Earth for centuries--is "What are Saturn's ring made of?"
 By the middle of the nineteenth century, various dynamical and thermodynamic
arguments had conclusively proved that the rings could not be solid, liquid, or
gas! What is left? In 1857, Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, after proving
that a solid ring would become unstable and break up, suggested that the rings
are composed of a great number of small particles, all independently orbiting
Saturn, like so many tiny moons. That inspired speculation was verified in 1895,
when Lick Observatory astronomers measured the Doppler shift of sunlight
reflected from the rings and showed that the velocities thus determined were
exactly what would be expected from separate particles moving in circular orbits
in accordance with Newton's law of gravity.
 What sort of particles make up the rings? The fact that they reflect most (over 80
percent) of the sunlight striking them had long suggested to astronomers that
they were made of ice, and infrared observations in the 1970s confirmed that
water ice is indeed a prime ring constituent.
 Radar observations and later Voyager studies of scattered sunlight showed that
the diameters of the particles range from fractions of a millimeter to tens of
meters, with most particles being about the size (and composition) of a
large snowball on Earth.
 We now know that the rings are truly thin--perhaps only a few tens of meters
thick in places. Stars can occasionally be seen through them, like automobile
headlights penetrating a snowstorm.
 Why are the rings so thin? The answer seems to be that collisions between
ring particles tend to keep them all moving in circular orbits in a single
plane. Any particle that tries to stray away from this orderly motion finds itself in
an orbit that soon runs into other ring particles. Over long periods of time, the
ensuing jostling serves to keep all particles moving in circular, planar orbits. The
asymmetric gravitational field of Saturn (the result of its flattened shape) sees to
it that the rings lie in the plane of the planet's equator.
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 THE VIEW FROM VOYAGER

 As Voyager approached Saturn, that scientists on Earth were fairly confident that
they understood the nature of the rings. However, there were many surprises in
store. The Voyager mission changed forever our view of this spectacular region
in our cosmic backyard, revealing the rings to be vastly more complex than
astronomers had imagined.
 As the Voyager probes approached Saturn, it became obvious that the main
rings are actually composed of tens of thousands of narrow ringlets (shown in
Figure).
 Although Voyager cameras did find several new gaps in the rings, the ringlets are
generally not separated from each other by empty space. Instead, the rings
contain concentric regions of alternating high and low concentrations of ring
particles--the ringlets are just the high-density peaks.
 Although the process is not fully understood, it seems that the mutual
gravitational attraction of the ring particles (as well as the effects of Saturn's inner
moons) enables waves of matter to form and move in the plane of the rings,
rather like ripples on the surface of a pond.
 The wave crests typically wrap around the rings, forming tightly wound spiral
patterns called spiral density waves that resemble grooves in a huge celestial
phonograph record.

The Voyager 2 cameras took this close-up of the ring structure just before plunging through the
tenuous outer rings of Saturn. The ringlets in the B ring, spread over several thousand kilometers,
are resolved here to about 10 km. As Voyager approached Saturn, more and more of these tiny
ringlets became noticeable in the main rings. The (false) color variations probably indicate
different sizes and compositions of the particles making up the thousands of rings. Earth is
superposed, to proper scale, for a size comparison.

 Although the ringlets are probably the result of spiral waves in the rings, the true
gaps are not. The narrower gaps--about 20 of them--are most likely swept clean
by the action of small moonlets embedded in them. These moonlets are larger
(perhaps 10 or 20 km in diameter) than the largest true ring particles, and they
simply "sweep up" ring material through collisions as they go.
 Despite many careful searches of the Voyager images, only one of these
moonlets has so far been found--in 1991, after five years of exhaustive study,
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 NASA scientists confirmed the discovery of the eighteenth moon of Saturn (now
named Pan) in the Encke Division.
 Astronomers have found indirect evidence for embedded moonlets, in the form of
"wakes" that they leave behind them in the rings, but no other direct sightings
have occurred. Despite their elusiveness, however, moonlets are still regarded
as the best explanation for the small gaps.
 Voyager found a series of faint rings, now known collectively as the D ring,
inside the inner edge of the C ring, stretching down almost to Saturn's cloud
tops. The D ring contains relatively few particles and is so dark that it is
completely invisible from Earth.
 Another faint ring, also a Voyager discovery, lies well outside the main ring
structure. Known as the E ring, it appears to be associated with volcanism on the
moon Enceladus.
 The Voyager cameras revealed one other completely unexpected feature. A
series of dark radial "spokes" formed on the B ring, moved around the planet
for about one ring orbit period, and then disappeared (Figure).
 Careful scrutiny of these peculiar drifters showed that they were composed of
very fine (micron-sized) dust hovering a few tens of meters above the plane of
the rings.
 Scientists believe that this dust was held in place by electrostatic forces
generated in the ring plane, perhaps resulting from particle collisions there. The
electrical fields slowly dispersed, and the spokes faded as the ring revolved. We
expect that the creation and dissolution of such spokes is a regular occurrence in
the Saturn ring system.

Saturn's B ring showed a series of dark temporary spokes as Voyager 2 flew by at a distance of
about 4 million km. The spokes were caused by small particles suspended just above the ring
plane.

 These considerations apply equally well to the other jovian worlds. Figure
below shows the location of the ring system of each jovian planet relative
to the planet's Roche limit.

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  Given the approximations in our assumptions, we can conclude that all of
the rings are found within the Roche limit of their parent planet.
 Notice that the calculation of this limit applies only to moons massive enough for
their own gravity to be the dominant force binding them together.
 Sufficiently small moons can survive even within the Roche limit because
they are held together mostly by interatomic (electromagnetic) forces, not
by gravity.

The rings of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. All distances are expressed in planetary radii.
The red line represents the Roche limit. In all cases, the rings lie within the Roche limit of the
parent planet.

ORBITAL RESONANCES AND SHEPHERD SATELLITES

 Voyager images show that the largest gap in the rings, the Cassini
Division, is not completely empty of matter. In fact, as shown in Figure
below, the Division contains a series of faint ringlets and gaps (and,
presumably, embedded moonlets too).
 The overall concentration of ring particles in the division as a whole is,
however, much lower than in the A and B rings.
 Although its small internal gaps probably result from embedded
satellites, the division itself does not. It owes its existence to another
solar-system resonance, this time involving particles orbiting in the
division and Saturn's innermost major moon, Mimas.

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Close inspection by Voyager revealed that the Cassini Division (shown here as the darker color) is not
completely empty. It contains a series of faint ringlets and gaps, assumed to be caused by unseen
embedded satellites. The density of material in the division is very low, accounting for its dark appearance
from the Earth.

 A ring particle moving in an orbit within the Cassini Division has an

orbital period exactly half that of Mimas. Particles in the division thus
complete exactly two orbits around Saturn in the time taken for Mimas
to orbit once--a configuration known as a 2:1 resonance.
 The effect of this resonance is that particles in the division feel a
gravitational tug from Mimas at exactly the same location in their orbit
every other time around.
 Successive tugs reinforce one another, and the initially circular
trajectories of the ring particles soon get stretched out into ellipses. In
their new orbits these particles collide with other particles and eventually
find their way into new circular orbits at other radii. The net effect is that
the number of ring particles in the Cassini Division is greatly reduced.
 Particles in "nonresonant" orbits (that is, at radii where the orbital period
is not simply related to the period of Mimas) also experience Mimas's
gravitational pull. But the times when the force is greatest are spread
uniformly around the orbit, and the tugs cancel out. It's a little like
pushing a child on a swing--pushing at the same point in the swing's
motion each time produces much better results than do random shoves.
 Thus, Mimas (or any other moon) has a large effect on the ring at those
radii where a resonance exists and little or no effect elsewhere. We now
know that resonances between ring particles and moons play an
important role in shaping the fine structure of Saturn's rings.
 For example, the sharp outer edge of the A ring corresponds precisely
to a 3:2 resonance with Mimas (three ring orbits in two Mimas orbital
periods). Most theories of planetary rings predict that the ring system
should spread out with time, basically because of collisions among ring
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 particles. The A ring's outer edge is "patrolled" by a small satellite
named Atlas, held in place by the resonance with Mimas, which
prevents ring particles from diffusing away.
 Outside the A ring lies the strangest ring of all. The faint,
narrow F ring was discovered by Pioneer in 1979, but its full
complexity became evident only when Voyager took a closer look.
Unlike the inner major rings, the F ring is narrow, less than a hundred
kilometers wide. It lies just inside Saturn's Roche limit, separated from
the A ring by about 3500 km.
 Its narrowness by itself is unusual, as is its slightly eccentric shape, but
its oddest feature is that it looks for all the world as though it is made up
of several separate strands braided together!
 This remarkable discovery sent dynamicists scrambling in search of an
explanation. It now seems as though the ring's intricate structure, as
well as its thinness, arise from the influence of two small moons, known
as shepherd satellites, that orbit on either side of it (Figure 12.15).

Saturn's narrow F ring appears to contain kinks and braids, making it unlike any of Saturn's other rings.

The F ring's thinness, and possibly its other peculiarities too, can be explained by the effects of two
shepherd satellites that orbit a few hundred kilometers inside and outside the ring. This photo shows one
of the shepherding satellites, roughly 100 km in length, at right.

 These two small, dark satellites, each about 50 km in diameter, are called
Prometheus and Pandora. They orbit about 1000 km on either side of the F ring,
and their gravitational influence on the F-ring particles keeps the ring tightly
confined in its narrow orbit. As shown in Figure, any particle straying too far out
of the F ring is gently guided back into the fold by one or the other of the moons.
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 (The moon Atlas confines the A ring in a somewhat similar way.) However, the
details of how Prometheus and Pandora produce the braids in the F ring and why
the two moons are there at all, in such similar orbits, remain unclear. There is
some evidence that other eccentric rings found in the gaps in the A, B, and C
rings may also result from the effects of shepherding moonlets.

(a) Strange as it may seem, the net effect of the interactions between a moon and ring particles is that the
moon tends to push those particles away from it. (b) The F ring shepherd satellites operate by forcing
errant F ring particles back into the main ring. Each moon operates as in part (a) so that the ring is
confined between the two moons. As a consequence of Newton's Third Law of Motion, the satellites
themselves slowly drift away from the ring.

THE ORIGIN OF THE RINGS

 Two possible origins have been suggested for Saturn's rings. Astronomers
estimate that the total mass of ring material is no more than 10 15 tons--enough to
make a satellite about 250 km in diameter. If such a satellite strayed inside
Saturn's Roche limit or was destroyed (perhaps by a collision) near that radius, a
ring could have resulted. An alternative view is that the rings represent material
left over from Saturn's formation stage 4.5 billion years ago. In this scenario,
Saturn's tidal field prevented any moon from forming inside the Roche limit, and
so the material has remained a ring ever since. Which is correct?
 All the dynamic activity observed in Saturn's rings suggests to many researchers
that the rings must be quite young--perhaps no more than 50 million years old, or
100 times younger than the solar system. There is just too much going on for
them to have remained stable for billions of years, so they probably aren't left
over from the planet's formative stages. If this is so, then either the rings must be
continuously replenished, perhaps by fragments of Saturn's moons chipped off
by meteorites, or they are the result of a relatively recent, possibly catastrophic,
event in the planet's system--perhaps a small moon that was hit by a large
comet, or even by another moon. Astronomers normally prefer not to invoke
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 catastrophic events to explain observed phenomena, but the more we learn of
the universe, the more we realize that catastrophe probably plays an important
role. For now, the details of the formation of Saturn's ring system simply aren't
known.

THE ROCHE LIMIT

 But why a ring of particles at all? What process produced the rings in the first
place?
 To answer these questions, consider the fate of a small moon orbiting close to a
massive planet such as Saturn. The moon is held together by internal forces--its
own gravity, for example. As we bring our hypothetical moon closer to the planet,
the tidal force on it increases. Recall from Chapter 7 that the effect of such a tidal
force is to stretch the moon along the direction to the planet--that is, to create a
tidal bulge. Recall also that the tidal force increases rapidly with decreasing
distance from the planet.
 As the moon is brought closer to the planet, it reaches a point where the tidal
force tending to stretch it out becomes greater than the internal forces holding it
together. At that point, the moon is torn apart by the planet's gravity, as shown in
Figure. The pieces of the satellite then pursue their own individual orbits around
that planet, eventually spreading all the way around it in the form of a ring.

The increasing tidal field of a planet first distorts, and then destroys, a moon that strays
too close. (The distortion is exaggerated in the second and third panels.

 For any given planet and any given moon, this critical distance, inside of which
the moon is destroyed, is known as the tidal stability limit, or the Roche limit,
after the nineteenth-century French mathematician Edouard Roche, who first
calculated it.
 If our hypothetical moon is held together by its own gravity and its average
density is the same as that of the parent planet (both reasonably good
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 approximations for Saturn's larger moons), then the Roche limit is just 2.4 times
the radius of the planet. Thus, for Saturn, no moon can survive within a distance
of 144,000 km of the planet's center, about 7000 km beyond the outer edge of
the A ring. The rings of Saturn occupy the region inside Saturn's Roche limit.

Saturn’s Moons : 82, Largest Titan

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