A traveling feature in Saturn's rings
Esposito, Larry W.; Sremčević, Miodrag; Albers, Nicole; Brown, Zarah L.; Stewart, Glen R.; Rehnberg, Morgan E.
United States
Abstract
The co-orbital satellites of Saturn, Janus and Epimetheus, swap radial positions every 4.0 years. Since Cassini has been in orbit about Saturn, this has occurred on 21 January in 2006, 2010, and 2014. We describe the effects of this radial migration in the Lindblad resonance locations of Janus within the rings. When the swap occurs such that Janus moves towards Saturn and Epimetheus away, nonlinear interference between now-relocated density waves launches a solitary wave that travels through the rings with a velocity approximately twice that of the local spiral density wave group velocity in the A ring and commensurate with the spiral density wave group velocity in the B ring.