Coorbital Satellites of Saturn: Congenital Formation

TL;DR

This study investigates how coorbital satellites around Saturn could form through mass accretion from planetesimal clouds near Lagrangian points, showing that such a process can produce satellites similar in size and orbit type to those observed.

Contribution

It demonstrates that mass accretion from planetesimal clouds near Lagrangian points is a plausible mechanism for coorbital satellite formation around Saturn.

Findings

Formation of coorbital satellites with masses similar to Saturn's coorbitals.

Most satellites exhibit horseshoe orbits, some are in tadpole orbits.

Mass accretion can produce satellites consistent with observed Saturnian coorbitals.

Abstract

Saturn is the only known planet to have coorbital satellite systems. In the present work we studied the process of mass accretion as a possible mechanism for coorbital satellites formation. The system considered is composed of Saturn, a proto-satellite and a cloud of planetesimals distributed in the coorbital region around a triangular Lagrangian point. The adopted relative mass for the proto-satellite was 10^-6 of Saturn's mass and for each planetesimal of the cloud three cases of relative mass were considered, 10^-14, 10^-13 and 10^-12 masses of Saturn. In the simulations each cloud of planetesimal was composed of 10^3, 5 x 10^3 or 10^4 planetesimals. The results of the simulations show the formation of coorbital satellites with relative masses of the same order of those found in the saturnian system (10^-13 - 10^-9). Most of them present horseshoe type orbits, but a significant part is in tadpole orbit around L_4 or L_5. Therefore, the results indicate that this is a plausible mechanism for the formation of coorbital satellites.