The production of braids in Saturn's F ring

Abstract

The braided structure noted in Voyager images of the Saturn F ring is presently addressed by two models. In the first, the pattern is generated by a narrow and initially uniform ring's passing of a nearby satellite, followed by an embedded moonlet gravitational acceleration-induced doubling back so that trajectories of the ring particles traverse one end of the classic horseshoe orbit. In the second model, the F ring is composed of two separated strands before the Moon's passage, so that a long braided pattern can be generated by the subsequent drift in relative phase; the embedded moonlet is thereby obviated