Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC-BY 4.0)No comments here
Skip to main content
Saturn’s Young Rings I: The Moment of Inertia of Saturn
Presentation #301.05 in the session Ring Systems: Planetary Rosetta Stones.
Published onOct 20, 2022
Saturn’s Young Rings I: The Moment of Inertia of Saturn
The present obliquity of Saturn could arise from Titan migration (1,2). This scenario requires the moment of inertia (MOI) of Saturn to be in a certain range, and that the system is currently in a Neptune resonance. We use several high-precision nonperturbative approaches to construct interior models that match Cassini gravity constraints to various degrees and investigate the corresponding MOI range. Regardless of approach, our refined MOI values lie within a narrow band, with implications for the history of Saturn’s obliquity and ring system.
1Saillenfest et al. [2016] Icarus 279, 62. 2Saillenfest et al. [2021] Nature Astronomy 5, 345
