The discovery and dynamical evolution of an object at the outer edge of Saturn’s A ring

Murray, Carl D.; Cooper, Nicholas J.; Williams, Gareth A.; Attree, Nicholas O.; Boyer, Jeffrey S.

United Kingdom, United States

Abstract

We report on the serendipitous discovery of an unresolved, evolving, sub-km-radius object with a semimajor axis <10 km inside that of the edge of Saturn’s main rings. The object has been detectable in Cassini images since at least May 2012 and its changing orbit shows evidence of a possible disruption in early 2013.

2014 Icarus
Cassini 11