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Exploring Mesoscale Structures Using Chord Occultations Of Saturn's Rings, Lamia Benyamine
Exploring Mesoscale Structures Using Chord Occultations Of Saturn's Rings, Lamia Benyamine
Honors Undergraduate Theses
The Cassini spacecraft orbited Saturn for over 13 years and collected stellar occultations using an Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS). Chord occultations were analyzed using autocorrelations at minimum ring plane radius to visualize the structure and correlation in the azimuthal direction. These particle tracking occultations cut a chord across the rings in the path of the star. By taking the autocorrelation of these chord occultations, 8 out of the 66 showed clumping within the first 3.0 km in azimuth, representing signs of a structure. Six of those occultations could be moonlets or propellers as their minimum ring plane radii are in …