Abstract
SATURN 's F ring, which lies 3,400 km beyond the edge of the main ring system, was discovered by the Pioneer 11 spacecraft1 in 1979. It is a narrow, eccentric ring which shows an unusual 'braided' appearance in several Voyager 1 images2 obtained in 1980, although it appears more regular in images from Voyager 2 obtained nine months later3. The discovery of the moons Pandora and Prometheus orbiting on either side of the ring provided a partial explanation for some of the observed features4. Recent observations of Prometheus5,6 by the Hubble Space Telescope show, surprisingly, that it is lagging behind its expected position by ∼20°. By modelling the dynamical evolution of the entire Prometheus–F ring–Pandora system, we show here that Prometheus probably encountered the core of the F ring in 1994 and that it may still be entering parts of the ring once per orbit. Collisions with objects in the F ring provide a plausible explanation for the observed lag and imply that the mass of the F ring is probably less than 25% that of Prometheus.
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Murray, C., Giuliatti Winter, S. Periodic collisions between the moon Prometheus and Saturn's F ring. Nature 380, 139–141 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1038/380139a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/380139a0
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