The Rotation Period of Saturn's Polar Hexagon

The rotation rates of the interiors of the outer planets are normally derived from their periodic radio emissions. However, recent observations of both Jupiter and Saturn have revealed surface features with periods close to those derived for the interiors. In the study reported here, this process is carried one stage further, with the derivation of a rotation rate for the spot associated with Satum's polar hexagon, which is simultaneously within and more accurate than the Saturnian radio period.     

The source of Saturn's G ring

The origin of Saturn's narrow G ring has been unclear. We show that it contains a bright arc located 167,495.6 +/- 1.3 km from Saturn's center. This longitudinally localized material is trapped in a 7:6 corotation eccentricity resonance with the satellite Mimas. The cameras aboard the Cassini spacecraft mainly observe small (1 to 10 micrometers) dust grains in this region, but a sharp decrease in the flux of energetic electrons measured near this arc requires that it also contain larger (centimeter- to meter-sized) bodies whose total mass is equivalent to that of a approximately 100-meter-wide ice-rich moonlet. Collisions into these bodies may generate dust, which subsequently drifts outward to populate the rest of the G ring. Thus, the entire G ring could be derived from an arc of debris held in a resonance with Mimas.     

The interaction of the atmosphere of Enceladus with Saturn's plasma

During the 14 July 2005 encounter of Cassini with Enceladus, the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer measured strong deflections in the corotating ion flow, commencing at least 27 Enceladus radii (27 x 252.1 kilometers) from Enceladus. The Cassini Radio and Plasma Wave Science instrument inferred little plasma density increase near Enceladus. These data are consistent with ion formation via charge exchange and pickup by Saturn's magnetic field. The charge exchange occurs between neutrals in the Enceladus atmosphere and corotating ions in Saturn's inner magnetosphere. Pickup ions are observed near Enceladus, and a total mass loading rate of about 100 kilograms per second (3 x 10(27) H(2)O molecules per second) is inferred.     

The dust halo of Saturn's largest icy moon, Rhea

Saturn's moon Rhea had been considered massive enough to retain a thin, externally generated atmosphere capable of locally affecting Saturn's magnetosphere. The Cassini spacecraft's in situ observations reveal that energetic electrons are depleted in the moon's vicinity. The absence of a substantial exosphere implies that Rhea's magnetospheric interaction region, rather than being exclusively induced by sputtered gas and its products, likely contains solid material that can absorb magnetospheric particles. Combined observations from several instruments suggest that this material is in the form of grains and boulders up to several decimetres in size and orbits Rhea as an equatorial debris disk. Within this disk may reside denser, discrete rings or arcs of material.     

Dynamics of Saturn's south polar vortex

The camera onboard the Cassini spacecraft has allowed us to observe many of Saturn's cloud features. We present observations of Saturn's south polar vortex (SPV) showing that it shares some properties with terrestrial hurricanes: cyclonic circulation, warm central region (the eye) surrounded by a ring of high clouds (the eye wall), and convective clouds outside the eye. The polar location and the absence of an ocean are major differences. It also shares properties with the polar vortices on Venus, such as polar location, cyclonic circulation, warm center, and long lifetime, but the Venus vortices have cold collars and are not associated with convective clouds. The SPV's combination of properties is unique among vortices in the solar system.     

The variable rotation period of the inner region of Saturn's plasma disk

We show that the plasma and magnetic fields in the inner region of Saturn's plasma disk rotate in synchronism with the time-variable modulation period of Saturn's kilometric radio emission. This relation suggests that the radio modulation has its origins in the inner region of the plasma disk, most likely from a centrifugally driven convective instability and an associated plasma outflow that slowly slips in phase relative to Saturn's internal rotation. The slippage rate is determined by the electrodynamic coupling of the plasma disk to Saturn and by the drag force exerted by its interaction with the Enceladus neutral gas torus.     

Saturn's Rings: Identification of Water Frost

A recently published infrared spectrum of Saturn's rings resembles our laboratory spectra of water frosts. Furthermore, there are discrepancies between the ring spectrum and ammonia frost spectra in the 2- to 2.5-micro region. These discrepancies render unlikely a reported ideti tification of ammonia frost in the ring spectrum.     

Evaporation of Ice in Space: Saturn's Rings

The photosputtering erosion velocity of ice in space is estimated to be 400 centimeters per billion years at 1 astronomical unit.     

The Drift of Saturn's North Polar Spot Observed by the Hubble Space Telescope

Polar projections of 50 images of Saturn at 889 nanometers and 25 images at 718 nanometers taken by the Hubble Space Telescope in November 1990, as well as 3 images at each wavelength taken in June 1991, have been examined. Among them, 31 show the north polar spot, which is associated with Saturn's polar hexagon, in locations suitable for measurement. In each image, planetocentric coordinates of the polar spot were determined, and the movement of the spot with respect to Saturn's system III rotation rate was studied. During the period of observation, the polar spot had first a short-term westward movement and then a long-term eastward drift. The rate of the long-term drift was -0.060 +/- 0.008 degrees per day with respect to system III, approximately 50 percent greater than previously determined from Voyager. The original 1980 and 1981 Voyager data were combined with the new Hubble images to form an 11-year base line. The eastward drift over the longer period was -0.0569 degrees per day. The long-term drift could be due to uncertainty in the standard value of the internal rotation period, which is 810.7939 +/- 0.148 degrees per 24-hour day. The short-term movement in November 1990 has a rate that is greater in magnitude but opposite in sign and probably represents a real, transient motion of the spot relative to the internal rotation system.     

Composition and dynamics of plasma in Saturn's magnetosphere

During Cassini's initial orbit, we observed a dynamic magnetosphere composed primarily of a complex mixture of water-derived atomic and molecular ions. We have identified four distinct regions characterized by differences in both bulk plasma properties and ion composition. Protons are the dominant species outside about 9 RS (where RS is the radial distance from the center of Saturn), whereas inside, the plasma consists primarily of a corotating comet-like mix of water-derived ions with approximately 3% N+. Over the A and B rings, we found an ionosphere in which O2+ and O+ are dominant, which suggests the possible existence of a layer of O2 gas similar to the atmospheres of Europa and Ganymede.     

A Wave Dynamical Interpretation of Saturn's Polar Hexagon

The hexagonal, pole-centered cloud feature in Saturn's northern atmosphere, as revealed in Voyager close-encounter imaging mosaics, may be interpreted as a stationary Rossby wave. The wave is embedded within a sharply peaked eastward jet (of 100 meters per second) and appears to be perturbed by at least one anticyclonic oval vortex immediately to the south. The effectively exact observational determination of the horizontal wave number and phase speed, applied to a simple model dispersion relation, suggests that the wave is vertically trapped and provides a diagnostic template for further modeling of the deep atmospheric stratification.     

结合纹理信息Hyperion高光谱影像分类

高光谱遥感光谱特征明显,单纯利用其光谱优势难以达到影像分类精度要求,特别是区分植被精细类别。为了进一步提高Hyperion高光谱影像分类精度,研究加入包含区域亮度变化及结构特征的纹理信息,试图提高分类精度。以杭州市余杭区百丈镇为试验区,首先提取研究区道路、建筑物、农田、毛竹Phyllostachysedulis林、马尾松Pinusmassoniana林和栎类Quercus等7种类型的端元光谱,然后对端元进行线性光谱分离,利用二阶概率矩阵对线性光谱分离出的8个波段提取纹理特征,最终结合线性分离后的端元光谱实现分类。结果表明：纹理信息融入后分类结果较单源信息光谱角制图和单源信息支持向量机方法有明显的改善,建筑物精度分别提高了34．13％和17．16％,农田提高了19．71％和9．24％,马尾松则改善了27．09％和5．42％,栎类精度提高了近3．00％和10．00％,且一定程度上避免了椒盐效应。采用光谱与纹理信息结合的方法对Hyperion高光谱影像分类是可行的。分类过程中端元的提取、纹理分析时特征向量的组合及纹理移动窗口大小的选择对分类结果起重要的作用。图6表1参19     

Ground-Based Observations of Saturn's North Polar Spot and Hexagon

Ground-based observations of two conspicuous features near the north pole of Saturn, the polar vortex and the hexagonal wave structure, were made from July 1990 to October 1991, 10 years after their discovery. During this period the polar spot drifted in longitude, relative to system III, by -0.0353 degrees per day on average. Superimposed on this mean motion, the spot also underwent short-term rapid excursions in longitude of up to approximately 14 degrees at rates of up to approximately 1 degrees per day. The spot also exhibited irregular variations in its latitude location. A combination of these data together with those obtained by Voyager 1 and 2 in 1980 and 1981 shows that the spot drifted -0.0577 degrees per day for the 11-year interval from 1980 to 1991. The large lifetime of both features indicates that they are insensitive to the strong variations in the seasonal heating of the cloud layers in the upper polar atmosphere.     

The Titan -1:0 Nodal Bending Wave in Saturn's Ring C

The most prominent oscillatory feature observed in the Voyager 1 radio occultation of Saturn's rings is identified as a one-armed spiral bending wave excited by Titan's -1:0 nodal inner vertical resonance. Ring partides in a bending wave move in coherently inclined orbits, warping the local mean plane of the rings. The Titan -1:0 wave is the only known bending wave that propagates outward, away from Saturn, and the only spiral wave yet observed in which the wave pattern rotates opposite to the orbital direction of the ring particles. It is also the first bending wave identified in ring C. Modeling the observed feature with existing bending wave theory gives a surface mass density of approximately 0.4 g/cm(2) outside the wave region and a local ring thickness of [unknown]5 meters, and suggests that surface mass density is not constant in the wave region.     

Origin of Saturn's E Ring: Self-Sustained, Naturally

Saturn's diffuse E ring spans the region between 3 and 8 saturnian radii (R(s)), has its peak brightness near the orbit of the satellite Enceladus (3.95 R(s)), and is thought to be composed primarily of icy particles 1.0 +/- 0.3 micrometers in radius. Such particles are shown to move periodically along highly elliptical paths that cross the orbits of several saturnian satellites; the resulting energetic collisions of E ring particles with embedded satellites are capable of sustaining the E ring at its current optical depth. With several reasonable assumptions, this model naturally selects Enceladus as the primary source of ring material and may also provide mechanisms that explain the generation of the unusual amount of submicrometer dust in the neighboring F and G rings, the excess of OH molecules observed within the E ring, and the orbital brightness variations of nearby satellites.     

Thermal structure and dynamics of Saturn's northern springtime disturbance

Saturn's slow seasonal evolution was disrupted in 2010-2011 by the eruption of a bright storm in its northern spring hemisphere. Thermal infrared spectroscopy showed that within a month, the resulting planetary-scale disturbance had generated intense perturbations of atmospheric temperatures, winds, and composition between 20° and 50°N over an entire hemisphere (140,000 kilometers). The tropospheric storm cell produced effects that penetrated hundreds of kilometers into Saturn's stratosphere (to the 1-millibar region). Stratospheric subsidence at the edges of the disturbance produced "beacons" of infrared emission and longitudinal temperature contrasts of 16 kelvin. The disturbance substantially altered atmospheric circulation, transporting material vertically over great distances, modifying stratospheric zonal jets, exciting wave activity and turbulence, and generating a new cold anticyclonic oval in the center of the disturbance at 41°N.     

Observations of Energetic Ions and Electrons in Saturn's Magnetosphere

The passage of Pioneer 11 by Saturn provided a detailed view of a planetary magnetosphere that is intermediate between those of Jupiter and Earth in both scale and the complexity of its dynamic processes. It appears to have at least three distinct regions: (i) an outer magnetosphere, extending from 17 to 7.5 Saturn radii, that resembles that of Earth in many important aspects; (ii) a slot region, between 7.5 and 4 Saturn radii, where a marked decrease in all protons and low-energy electrons is observed; and (iii) an inner region, extending from 4 Saturn radii to the ring edge, that features a sharp increase in the proton flux extending to energies greater than 20 million electron volts. A cutoff of both proton and electron fluxes occurred just beyond the nominal edge of the A ring.