The vertical structure and thickness of Saturn's rings

Abstract

Observations of Saturn's rings over the last few years have contributed greatly to unravelling questions as to their nature and origin. However, some fundamental issues concerning the vertical structure and thickness of the rings have remained in dispute. In this note we present a synthesis of our results which reconciles most of the conflicting data. We first discuss the vertical structure and show how the many-particle-thick model appears to be feasible, but permits a local ring thickness of only a few tens of metres, much less than the thickness suggested by observations at ring-plane passage. We then describe how solar and satellite perturbations, which are coherent and not dispersive, do not significantly affect the true local vertical thickness of the rings, but do affect the tilt of the mean ring plane in a way that could be relevant to an understanding of the ring-passage observations.