The dust halo of Saturn's main rings

• Applicant: Professor Frank Spahn, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Astrophysics and Astronomy
• Term: from 2017 to 2023
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 330226508

The outstanding Cassini mission and especially its grand finale provided an astonishing new insight to the processes taking place in Saturn’s magnificent rings, which are the closest representatives of the vast family of cosmic disks and may be seen as cosmic laboratories. Yet, their age is still unknown and subject of ongoing discussions.Based on our work during the original project, we plan to utilize measurements of so called “ring rain” particles, as they have been seen during the final phase of the Cassini mission, as a gauging for an analytical erosion model to determine the rings’ mass loss over time. We include a stochastic model, that has been newly derived during the preceding project phase, together with a deterministic description of the effective potential for nanodust particles. This combined approach describes the motion of a particle in Saturn’s magnetic and gravitational fields that is subject to continued stochastic charging. As a consequence, the particle’s energy is slowly increased and the formerly spatially bound motion can become unbound – freeing the particle to enter the ring rain.We apply this model to achieve new information on the impact-ejecta erosion of Saturn’s rings which also limits their livetime.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: USA
• Cooperation Partner: Hsiang-Wen Hsu, Ph.D.