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Stability of Neptune's ring arcs in question

Nature volume 400, pages 733–735 (1999)Cite this article

Abstract

Although all four of the gas-giant planets in the Solar System have ring systems, only Neptune exhibits ‘ring arcs’—stable clumps of dust that are discontinuous from each other1. Two basic mechanisms for confining the dust to these arcs have been proposed. The first2relies on orbital resonances with two shepherding satellites, while the second3 invokes a single satellite (later suggested to be Galatea4) to produce the observed ring arc structures. Here we report observations of the ring arcs and Galatea, which show that there isa mismatch between the locations of the arcs and the site of Galatea's co-rotation inclined resonance. This result calls into question Galatea's sole role in confining the arcs.

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Figure 1: Initial image of Neptune's ring arcs obtained by the HST and its near-infrared camera NICMOS on 3 June 1998 at 19:40 UT.
Figure 2: Higher-resolution false-colour image of the four ring arcs of Neptune obtained by HST/NICMOS at a wavelength of 1.87 µm.
Figure 3: Brightness profile of the arcs along the azimuthal direction.

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Acknowledgements

We thank R. Thompson and M. Rieke from the NICMOS IDT team as well as P.Nicholson for calculating the predicted offsets of the arcs for 20 and 22 October 1998, and R. Jacobson for providing us with the coordinates of the normal of the orbital planes of the neptunian inner satellites.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 4800 Oak Grove Drive, MS 183-501, Pasadena, 91109-8099, California, USA

    Christophe Dumas & Richard J. Terrile

  2. University of Hawaii, Institute for Astronomy, 82-6012 Pu'uhonua Road, Napo'opo'o, 96704, Hawaii, USA

    Bradford A. Smith

  3. University of Arizona, Steward Observatory, 933 N. Cherry Avenue, Tucson, 85721, Arizona, USA

    Glenn Schneider

  4. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California at Los Angeles, 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, 90095-1562, California, USA

    E. E. Becklin

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  1. Christophe Dumas
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  2. Richard J. Terrile
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  3. Bradford A. Smith
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  5. E. E. Becklin
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Correspondence to Christophe Dumas.

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Dumas, C., Terrile, R., Smith, B. et al. Stability of Neptune's ring arcs in question. Nature 400, 733–735 (1999). https://doi.org/10.1038/23414

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