Appearance of Saturn's F ring azimuthal channels for the anti-alignment configuration between the ring and Prometheus

TL;DR

This study investigates how the F ring's azimuthal channels change during the anti-alignment configuration with Prometheus, revealing wider channels, deeper penetration, and a new island feature near apoapsis.

Contribution

The paper provides a numerical analysis of the F ring's azimuthal channels during anti-alignment, discovering a new island feature and detailed channel morphology.

Findings

Channels are wider and deeper in anti-alignment.

A new island feature appears near apoapsis.

The shape of channels varies with Prometheus's orbital stage.

Abstract

In this article we explore the aspect of the F ring with respect to the anti-alignment configuration between the ring and Prometheus. We focus our attention on the shape of the F ring's azimuthal channels which were first reported by Porco et al. (2005) and numerically explored by Murray et al. (2005), who found excellent agreement between Cassini's ISS reprojected images and their numerical model via a direct comparison. We find that for anti-alignment the channels are wider and go deeper inside the ring material. From our numerical model we find a new feature, an island in the middle of the channel. This island is made up of the particles that have been perturbed the most by Prometheus and only appears when this satellite is close to apoapsis. In addition, plots of the anti-alignment configuration for different orbital stages of Prometheus are obtained and discussed here.