EPSC Abstracts
Vol. 17, EPSC2024-189, 2024, updated on 03 Jul 2024
https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2024-189
Europlanet Science Congress 2024
© Author(s) 2024. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Latest astrometric results for the Saturnian system

Valery Lainey1, Nicolas Rambaux1, Gabriel Tobie2, Nick Cooper3, Qingfeng Zhang4, Benoit Noyelles5, and Kevin Baillié1
Valery Lainey et al.
  • 1IMCCE, Paris Observatory, Paris, France (valery.lainey@imcce.fr)
  • 2LPG, UMR-CNRS 6112, Nantes Université, Nantes, France (gabriel.tobie@univ-nantes.fr)
  • 3Department of Physics and Astronomy, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK (n.cooper@qmul.ac.uk)
  • 4Department of Computer Science, Jinan University, Guangzhou, P. R. China (tqfz@jnu.edu.cn)
  • 5Institut UTINAM, CNRS UMR 6213, Université de Franche-Comté, OSU THETA, Besançon, France (benoit.noyelles@univ-fcomte.fr)

During the thirteen years spent in orbit around Saturn before its final plunge, the Cassini probe provided more than ten thousand astrometric observations of moons. Such a large amount of precise data has allowed us to search for extremely small signals in the orbital motion of the Saturnian satellites. These signals can be linked to key physical mechanisms at play in the system, opening the doors to a new vision of the Saturn system. Using more than a century of ground-based astrometric observations, and benefiting from Cassini imaging data, we have studied the orbital motion of all of Saturn's inner and main moons, including those recently discovered by the Cassini probe. We show how astrometry has allowed us to characterize the strong tidal effects acting among the Saturnian system, while assessing the interior characteristics of several moons and their primary, including the discovery of Mimas' ocean. Updated results are presented.

How to cite: Lainey, V., Rambaux, N., Tobie, G., Cooper, N., Zhang, Q., Noyelles, B., and Baillié, K.: Latest astrometric results for the Saturnian system, Europlanet Science Congress 2024, Berlin, Germany, 8–13 Sep 2024, EPSC2024-189, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2024-189, 2024.