Abstract
Abstract In addition to its suite of narrow dense rings, Uranus is surrounded by an extremely complex system of dusty rings that were most clearly seen by the Voyager spacecraft after it flew past the planet. A new analysis of the highest-resolution images of these dusty rings reveals that a number of them are less than 20 km wide. The extreme narrowness of these rings, along with the fact that most of them do not appear to fall close to known satellite resonances, should provide new insights into the forces responsible for sculpting the Uranian ring system.
Highlights
Uranus’ ring system is dominated by a series of nine dense, narrow rings discovered in 1977 and designated 6, 5, 4 α, β, η, γ, δ and (Elliot et al 1977; Millis et al 1977; Bhattacharyya and Bappu 1977)
Recall that the Narrow-Angle Camera (NAC) profiles are highpass filtered and so are insensitive to broad ring features like the sheet of dust seen in the Wide-Angle Camera (WAC) profile between the δ and λ rings
There are peaks in the NAC profiles that are correlated with the peaks in the WAC profile, and are generally much narrower, demonstrating that many of the features in the WAC profile are unresolved
Summary
Uranus’ ring system is dominated by a series of nine dense, narrow rings discovered in 1977 and designated 6, 5, 4 α, β, η, γ, δ and (Elliot et al 1977; Millis et al 1977; Bhattacharyya and Bappu 1977). There was a series of five Narrow-Angle Camera (NAC) images obtained during this time, each one targeted at the locations of one or more of the dense rings (see Figure 2 and Table 1 for summaries of the image geometries). These images have never been properly analyzed (Ockert et al 1987), most likely because upon initial inspection they look largely featureless.
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