Tag Archives: chaos

Asteroids: Centaurs, Asteroids: Main Belt, Asteroids: Trans-Neptunian Objects

The Solar System is a mess: Using Big Data to clear it up

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Hi there! When you look at our Solar System, you wonder how it came to be that way. I mean, it formed from a nebula, in which grain accreted to create the Sun, the planets,… and all these small bodies. Most of them have disappeared since the origin, they were either ejected, or accreted on a planet, or on the Sun… anyway still many of them remain. You have the Asteroid Main Belt, the Centaurs, the Kuiper Belt, the Oort cloud, the comets… Several studies have tried to determine connections between them, i.e. where does this comet come from? Was it originally a Centaur, a Kuiper Belt Object, something else? And how did it change its orbit? A close approach with a giant planet, maybe?
And to address this question, you simulate the trajectories… which is not straightforward to do. It is pretty classical to simulate a trajectory from given initial conditions, but to answer such a question, you need more.
You need more because you do not know how reliable are your initial conditions. Your comet was there that day… very well. How sure are you of that? You observe a position and a velocity, fine, but you have uncertainties on your measurements, don’t you?
Yes, you have. So, you simulate the trajectories of many comets, which initial conditions are consistent with your observations. That’s better. And you hope that the outcome of the trajectories (trajectories simulated backward, if you want to know the origin) will be pretty much the same, since the initial conditions are very close to each other…
But they are not! This is what we call sensitivity to the initial conditions. This often means chaos, but I do not want to detail this specific notion. But basically, when a comet swings by a giant planet, its trajectory is dramatically deviated. And the deviation is highly sensitive to the location of the comet. So sensitive that at some point, you lose the information given by your initial conditions. C’est la vie.
As a result, there are in the literature many studies presenting their simulations, and which conclusions are sometimes inconsistent with each other.
The study we discuss today, It’s Complicated: A Big Data Approach to Exploring Planetesimal Evolution in the Presence of Jovian Planets, by Kevin R. Grazier, Julie C. Castillo-Rogez, and Jonathan Horner, suggests another approach to clear up this mess. It considers that all of these possible trajectories constitute a reservoir of Big Data. This study has recently been published in The Astronomical Journal.

Outline

Architecture of the Solar System
Planetary encounters
The Big Data approach
Random walk from one belt to another
The origin of Ceres
The origin of trapped satellites
The study and its authors

Architecture of the Solar System

You know the 8 planets of our Solar System, from the closest to the outermost one:

  • Mercury,
  • Venus,
  • Earth,
  • Mars,
  • Jupiter,
  • Saturn,
  • Uranus,
  • Neptune.

And these planets are accompanied by many small bodies, which constitute

  • the Near-Earth Asteroids, which orbit among the 4 terrestrial planets (from Mercury to Mars),
  • the Main Belt Asteroids, which orbit between Mars and Jupiter,
  • the Centaurs, which orbit between Jupiter and Neptune,
  • the Kuiper Belt, which extends between 30 and 50 AU (astronomical units) from the Sun. So, its inner limit is the orbit of Neptune,
  • the scattered disc, which extends to 150 AU from the Sun. These objects are highly inclined. Eris is the largest known of them.
  • the detached objects, like Sedna. This population is very poorly known, and we do not even know if it is truly a population, or just some objects,
  • the hypothetical Oort cloud, which could be as far as one light-year, or 50,000 AU.

Of course, this list is not exhaustive. For instance, I did not mention the comets, which could originate from any of those populations of small objects.

In this study, the authors limit themselves to the orbit of Neptune. They consider 3 populations of objects between the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn, between Saturn and Uranus, and between Uranus and Neptune. And the question is: how do these populations evolve, to the current state? For that, planetary encounters appear to be of crucial importance.

Planetary encounters

Imagine a small body flying by Jupiter. It approaches Jupiter so closely that it enters its sphere of influence, in which the gravity of Jupter dominates the one of the Sun. Virtually, the object orbits Jupiter, but usually this orbit cannot be stable, since the approach is too fast. Locally, its orbit around Jupiter is hyperbolic, and the object does not stay there. Jupiter ejects it, and you do not know where, because the direction of the ejection is highly sensitive to the velocity of the object during its approach. It also depends on the mass of Jupiter, but this mass is very well known. Sometimes, the action of Jupiter is so strong that it fragments the object, as it did for the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9, in July 1994. And you can have this kind of phenomenon for any of the giant planets of the Solar System.

This is how planetary encounters could move, disperse, eject,… entire populations in the Solar System.

The Big Data approach

With so many objects (the authors considered 3 ensembles of 10,000 test particles, the ensembles being the 3 zones between two consecutive giant planets) and so many potential planetary encounters (the trajectories were simulated over 100 Myr), you generate a database of planetary encounters… how to deal with that? This is where the Big Data approach enters the game.

The authors performed it into two stages. The first one consisted to determine close encounter statistics and correlations, for instance with changes of semimajor axis, i.e. how a planetary encounter displaces an object in the Solar System. And the second stage aimed at reconstituting the path of the particles.

And now, the results.

Random walk from one belt to another

It appears that the particles could easily move from one belt to another. Eventually, they can be ejected. As the authors say, the classification of a particle into a population or another is ephemeral. It depends on when you observe it. In other words, a small object you observe in the Solar System could have been formed almost anywhere else. Even in situ. Now let us talk about specific examples.

The origin of Ceres

For instance, Ceres. You know, this is the largest of the Main Belt Asteroids, and the first to have been discovered, in 1801. It has recently been the target of the mission Dawn, which completed in October 2018.

Ceres seen by Dawn. © NASA
Ceres seen by Dawn. © NASA

Ceres is rich in volatiles like ammonia and carbon dioxides, as are other asteroids like Hygeia. Hygeia is itself a large Main Belt Asteroid. Knowing the origin of Ceres could give you the origin of these volatiles… but they could have been partly accreted after the migration… You see, it is difficult to be 100% sure.

Ceres could have formed in situ, i.e. between Mars and Jupiter, but this study shows that it could have originated from much further in the Solar System, and migrated inward.

The origin of trapped satellites

Most of the main satellites of the giant planets are thought to have been formed with the planet, in the protoplanetary nebula.
But in some cases, you have satellites, which orbit far from the parent planet, on an irregular orbit, i.e. a significantly inclined and eccentric one. In such a case, the body has probably not been formed in situ, but has been trapped by the planet. Among them are Saturn’s Phoebe and Neptune’s Triton, which are large satellite. I have discussed the case of Triton here. The trapping of Triton probably ejected mid-sized satellites of Neptune, which are now lost.

Phoebe seen by <i>Cassini</i> in August 2017 © NASA/ESA/JPL/SSI
Phoebe seen by Cassini in August 2017 © NASA/ESA/JPL/SSI
Mosaic of Triton taken by Voyager 2 in 1989. © NASA
Mosaic of Triton taken by Voyager 2 in 1989. © NASA

Phoebe and Triton entered the sphere of influence of their parent planet, but did not leave it. And where did they come from?

It seems probable that Triton was a Trans-Neptunian Object (TNO) before. In that part of the Solar System, the velocities are pretty low, which facilitate the captures. However, several scenarios are possible for Phoebe. The study show that it could have originated from an inner or from an outer orbit, and have jumped to Saturn from close encounters with Jupiter / Uranus / Neptune.

Something frustrating with such a study, which goes back to the origins, is that you lose some information. As a consequence, you can only conclude by “it is possible that”, but you cannot be certain. You have to admit it.

A way to secure some probabilities is to cross the dynamics with the physical properties, i.e. if you see that element on that body, and if that element is thought to have formed there, then you can infer something on the body, and the authors discuss these possibilities as well. But once more, you cannot be 100% sure. How do you know that this element has been formed there? Well, from the dynamics… which is chaotic… And when you see an element at the surface of a planetary body, does it mean that it is rich in it, or just coated by it, which means it could have accreted after the migration?

You see, you cannot be certain…

The study and its authors

And that’s it for today! Please do not forget to comment. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed, and follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Theoretical celestial mechanics

New chaos indicators

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Hi there! Today it is a little bit different. I will not tell you about something that has been observed but rather of a more general concept, which is the chaos in the Solar System. This is the opportunity to present you Second-order chaos indicators MEGNO2 and OMEGNO2: Theory, by Vladimir A. Shefer. This study has been originally published in Russian, but you can find an English translation in the Russian Physics Journal.

Outline

Sensitivity to the initial conditions
Stability
Diffusion of the Fundamental Frequencies
The KAM and the Nekhoroshev theorems
Chaos in the Solar System
The maximal Lyapunov exponent
To go faster: FLI and MEGNO
This study presents MEGNO2
The study and its author

To present you this theoretical study, I need to define some useful notions related to chaos. First is the sensitivity to the initial conditions.

Sensitivity to the initial conditions

Imagine you are a planetary body. I put you somewhere in the Solar System. This somewhere is your initial condition, actually composed of 6 elements: 3 for the position, and 3 for the velocity. So, I put you there, and you evolve, under the gravitational interaction of the other guys, basically the Sun and the planets of the Solar System. You then have a trajectory, which should be an orbit around the Sun, with some disturbances of the planets. What would have happened if your initial condition would have been slightly different? Well, you expect your trajectory to have been slightly different, i.e. pretty close.

Does it always happen this way? Actually, not always. Sometimes yes, but sometimes… imagine you have a close encounter with a planet (hopefully not the Earth). During the encounter, you are very sensitive to the gravitational perturbation of that planet. And if you arrive a little closer, or a little further, then that may change your trajectory a lot, since the perturbation depends on the distance to the planet. In such a case, you are very sensitive to the initial conditions.

What does that mean? It actually means that if you are not accurate enough on the initial condition, then your predicted trajectory will lack of accuracy. And beyond a certain point, predicting will just be pointless. This point can be somehow quantified with the Lyapunov time, see a little later.

An example of body likely to have close encounters with the Earth is the asteroid (99942) Apophis, which was discovered in 2004, and has sometimes close encounters with the Earth. There was one in 2013, there will be another one in 2029, and then in 2036. But risks of impact are ruled out, don’t worry. 🙂

Let us talk now about the problem of stability.

Stability

A stable orbit is an orbit which stays around the central body. A famous and recent example of unstable orbit is 1I/’Oumuamua, you know, our interstellar visitor. It comes from another planetary system, and passes by, on a hyperbolic orbit. No chaos in that case.

But sometimes, an initially stable orbit may become unstable because of an accumulation of gravitational interactions, which raise its eccentricity, which then exceeds 1. And this is where you may connect instability with sensitivity to initial conditions, and chaos. But this is not the same. And you can even be stable while chaotic.

Now, let us define a related (but different) notion, which is the diffusion of the fundamental frequencies.

Diffusion of the Fundamental Frequencies

Imagine you are on a stable, classical orbit, i.e. an ellipse. The Sun lies at one of its foci, and you have an orbital frequency, a precessional frequency of your pericenter, and a frequency related to the motion of your ascending node. All of these points have a motion around the Sun, with constant velocities. So, the orbit can be described with 3 fundamental frequencies. If your orbit is perturbed by other bodies, which have their own fundamental frequencies, then you will find them as additional frequencies in your trajectory. Very well. If the trajectories remain constant, then it can be topologically said that your trajectories lies on tori.

Things become more complicated when you have a drift of these fundamental frequencies. It is very often related to chaos, and sometimes considered as an indicator of it. In such a case, the tori are said to be destroyed. And we have theorems, which address the survival of these tori.

The KAM and the Nekhoroshev theorems

The most two famous of them are the KAM and the Nekhoroshev theorems.

KAM stands for Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser, which were 3 famous mathematicians, specialists of dynamical systems. These problems are indeed not specific to astronomy or planetology, but to any physical system, in which we neglect the dissipation.

The KAM theorem says that, for a slightly perturbed integrable system (allow me not to develop this point… just keep in mind that the 2-body problem is integrable), some tori survive, which means that you can have regular (non chaotic) orbits anyway. But some of them may be not. This theorem needs several assumptions, which may be difficult to fulfill when you have too many bodies.

The Nekhoroshev theory addresses the effective stability of destroyed tori. If the perturbation is small enough, then the trajectories, even not exactly on tori, will remain close enough to them over an exponentially long time, i.e. longer than the age of the Solar System. So, you may be chaotic, unstable… but remain anyway where you are.

Chaos is related to all of these notions, actually there are several definitions of chaos in the literature. Consider it as a mixture of all the elements I gave you. In particular the sensitivity to the initial conditions.

Chaos in the Solar System

Chaos has been observed in the Solar System. The first observation is the tumbling rotation of the satellite of Saturn Hyperion (see featured image). So, not an orbital case. Chaos has also been characterized in the motion of asteroids, for instance the Main-Belt asteroid (522) Helga has been proven to be in stable chaos in 1992 (see here). It is in fact swinging between two mean-motion resonances with Jupiter (Chirikov criterion), which confine its motion, but make it difficult to predict anyway. The associated Lyapunov time is 6.9 kyr.

There are also chaotic features in the rings of Saturn, which are due to the accumulation of resonances with satellites so close to the planet. These effects are even raised by the non-linear self-dynamics of the rings, in which the particles interact and collide. And the inner planets of the Solar System are chaotic over some 10s of Myr, this has been proven by long-term numerical integrations of their orbits.

To quantify this chaos, you need the Lyapunov time.

The maximal Lyapunov exponent

The Lyapunov time is the invert of the Lyapunov exponent. To estimate the Lyapunov exponent, you numerically integrate the trajectory, and its tangent vector. When the orbit is chaotic, the norm of this vector will grow exponentially, and the Lyapunov exponent is the asymptotic limit of the divergence rate of this exponential growth. It is strictly positive in case of chaos. Easy, isn’t it?

Not that easy, actually. The exponential growth makes that this norm might be too large and generate numerical errors, but this can be fixed in regularly, i.e. at equally spaced time intervals, renormalizing the tangent vector. Another problem is in the asymptotic limit: you may have to integrate over a verrrrrry long time to reach it. To bypass this problem of convergence, other indicators have been invented.

To go faster: FLI and MEGNO

FLI stands for Fast Lyapunov Indicators. There are several variants, the most basic one consists in stopping the integration at a given time. So, you give up the asymptotic limit, and you give up the Lyapunov time, but you can efficiently distinguish the regular orbits from the chaotic ones. This is a good point.

Another chaos detector is the MEGNO, for Mean Exponential Growth of Nearby Orbits. This consists to integrate the norm of the time derivative of the tangent vector divided by the norm of the tangent vector. The result tends to a straight line, which slope is half the maximal Lyapunov exponent. And this tool converges very fast. The author of the study I present you wishes to improve that tool.

This study presents MEGNO2

And for that, he presents us MEGNO2. This works like MEGNO, but with an osculating vector instead of a tangent one. Tangent means that this vector fits to a line tangent to the trajectory, while osculating means that it fits to its curvature as well, i.e. second order derivative. In other words, it is more accurate.

From this, the author shows that, like MEGNO, MEGNO2 tends to a straight line, but with a larger slope. As a consequence, he argues that it permits a more efficient detection of the chaotic orbits with respect to the regular ones. However, he does not address the link between this new slope and the Lyapunov time.

Something that my writing does not render, is that this paper is full of equations. Fair enough, for what I could call mathematical planetology.

The study and its author

As it often happens for purely theoretical studies, this one has only one author.

And that’s it for today! Please do not forget to comment. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed, and follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Asteroids: Extreme Trans-Neptunian Objects

How the Planet Nine would affect the furthest asteroids

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Hi there! You have heard of the hypothetical Planet Nine, which could be the explanation for an observed clustering of the pericentres of the furthest asteroids, known as eTNOS for extreme Trans-Neptunian Objects. I present you today a theoretical study investigating in-depth this mechanism, in being focused on the influence of the inclination of this Planet Nine. I present you Non-resonant secular dynamics of trans-Neptunian objects perturbed by a distant super-Earth by Melaine Saillenfest, Marc Fouchard, Giacomo Tommei and Giovanni B. Valsecchi. This study has recently been accepted for publication in Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy.

Outline

Is there a Planet Nine?
The secular dynamics of an asteroid
The Kozai-Lidov mechanism
Methodology
Results
To know more…

Is there a Planet Nine?

An still undiscovered Solar System planet has always been dreamed, and sometimes even hinted. We called it Tyche, Thelisto, Planet X (“X” for mystery, unknown, but also for 10, Pluto having been the ninth planet until 2006). Since 2015, this quest has been renewed after the observation of clustering in the pericentres of extreme TNOS. Further investigations concluded that at least 5 observed dynamical features of the Solar System could be explained by an additional planet, now called Planet Nine:

  1. the clustering of the pericentres of the eTNOs,
  2. the significant presence of retrograde orbits among the TNOs,
  3. the 6° obliquity of the Sun,
  4. the presence of highly inclined Centaurs,
  5. the dynamical detachment of the pericentres of TNOs from Neptune.

The combination of all of these elements tends to rule out a random process. It appears that this Planet Nine would be pretty like Neptune, i.e. 10 times heavier than our Earth, that its pericentre would be at 200 AU (while Neptune is at 30 AU only!), and its apocentre between 500 AU and 1200 AU. This would indeed be a very distant object, which would orbit the Sun in several thousands of years!

Astronomers (Konstantin Batygin and Michael Brown) are currently trying to detect this Planet Nine, unsuccessfully up to now. You can follow their blog here, from which I took some inspiration. The study I present today investigates the secular dynamics that this Planet Nine would induce.

The secular dynamics of an asteroid

The secular dynamics is the one involving the pericentre and the ascending node of an object, without involving its longitude. To make things clear, you know that a planetary object orbiting the Sun wanders on an eccentric, inclined orbit, which is an ellipse. When you are interested in the secular dynamics, you care of the orientation of this ellipse, but not of where the object is on this ellipse. The clustering of pericentres of eTNOs is a feature of the secular dynamics.

This is a different aspect from the dynamics due to mean-motion resonances, in which you are interested in objects, which orbital periods around the Sun are commensurate with the one of the Planet Nine. Some studies address this issue, since many small objects are in mean-motion resonance with a planet. Not this study.

The Kozai-Lidov mechanism

A notable secular effect is the Kozai-Lidov resonance. Discovered in 1961 by Michael Lidov in USSR and Yoshihide Kozai in Japan, this mechanism says that there exists a dynamical equilibrium at high inclination (63°) for eccentric orbits, in the presence of a perturber. So, you have the central body (the Sun), a perturber (the planet), and your asteroid, which could have its inclination pushed by this effect. This induces a libration of the orientation of its orbit, i.e. the difference between its pericentre and its ascending node would librate around 90° or 270°.

This process is even more interesting when the perturber has a significant eccentricity, since the so-called eccentric Kozai-Lidov mechanism generates retrograde orbits, i.e. orbits with an inclination larger than 90°. At 117°, you have another equilibrium.

Now, when you observe a small body which dynamics suggests to be affected by Kozai-Lidov, this means you should have a perturber… you see what I mean?

Of course, this perturber can be Neptune, but only sometimes. Other times, the dynamics would rather be explained by an outer perturber… which could be the Planet Nine, or a passing star (who knows?)

Methodology

Before mentioning the results of this study I must briefly mention the methodology. The authors made what I would call a semi-analytical study, i.e. they manipulated equations, but with the assistance of a computer. They wrote down the Hamiltonian of the restricted 3-body problem, i.e. the expression of the whole energy of the problem with respect to the orbital elements of the perturber and the TNO. This energy should be constant, since no dissipation is involved, and the way this Hamiltonian is written has convenient mathematical properties, which allow to derive the whole dynamics. Then this Hamiltonian is averaged over the mean longitudes, since we are not interested in them, we want only the secular dynamics.

A common way to do this is to expand the Hamiltonian following small parameters, i.e. the eccentricity, the inclination… But not here! You cannot do this since the eccentricity of the Planet Nine (0.6) and its inclination are not supposed to be small. So, the authors average the Hamiltonian numerically. This permits them to keep the whole secular dynamics due to the eccentricity and the inclination.

Once they did this, they looked for equilibriums, which would be preferential dynamical states for the TNOs. They also detected chaotic zones in the phase space, i.e. ranges of orbital elements, for which the trajectory of the TNOs would be difficult to predict, and thus potentially unstable. They detected these zones in plotting so-called Poincaré sections, which give a picture of the trajectories in a two-dimensional plane that reduces the number of degrees-of-freedom.

Results

And the authors find that the two Kozai-Lidov mechanisms, i.e. the one due to Neptune, and the one due to the Planet Nine, conflict for a semimajor axis larger than 150 AU, where orbital flips become possible. The equilibriums due to Neptune would disappear beyond 200 AU, being submerged by chaos. However, other equilibriums appear.

For the future, I see two ways to better constrain the Planet Nine:

  1. observe it,
  2. discover more eTNOs, which would provide more accurate constraints.

Will Gaia be useful for that? Anyway, this is a very exciting quest. My advice: stay tuned!

To know more…

That’s it for today! Please do not forget to comment. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Satellites of Saturn

The fate of the Alkyonides

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Hello everybody! Today, I will tell you on the dynamics of the Alkyonides. You know the Alkyonides? No? OK… There are very small satellites of Saturn, i.e. kilometer-sized, which orbit pretty close to the rings, but outside. These very small bodies are known to us thanks to the Cassini spacecraft, and a recent study, which I present you today, has investigated their long-term evolution, in particular their stability. Are they doomed or not? How long can they survive? You will know this and more after reading this presentation of Long-term evolution and stability of Saturnian small satellites: Aegaeon, Methone, Anthe, and Pallene, by Marco Muñoz-Gutiérrez and Silvia Giuliatti Winter. This study has recently been accepted for publication in The Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

Outline

The Alkyonides
The G and Pallene rings
Frequency diffusion
How resonances destabilize an orbit
Results
A perspective
To know more…

The Alkyonides

As usually in planetary sciences, bodies are named after the Greek mythology, which is the case of the four satellites discussed today. But I must admit that I cheat a little: I present them as Alkyonides, while Aegeon is actually a Hecatoncheires. The Alkyonides are the 7 daughters of Alcyoneus, among them are Anthe, Pallene, and Methone.

Here are some of there characteristics:

Methone Pallene Anthe Aegaeon
Semimajor axis 194,402 km 212,282 km 196,888 km 167,425 km
Eccentricity 0 0.004 0.0011 0.0002
Inclination 0.013° 0.001° 0.015° 0.001°
Diameter 2.9 km 4.4 km 2 km 0.66 km
Orbital period 24h14m 27h42m 24h52m 19h24m
Discovery 2004 2004 2007 2009

For comparison, Mimas orbits Saturn at 185,000 km, and the outer edge of the A Ring, i.e. of the main rings of Saturn, is at 137,000 km. So, we are in the close system of Saturn, but exterior to the rings.

Discovery of Anthe, aka S/2007 S4. Copyright: NASA.
Discovery of Anthe, aka S/2007 S4. Copyright: NASA.

These bodies are in mean-motion resonances with main satellites of Saturn, more specifically:

  • Methone orbits near the 15:14 MMR with Mimas,
  • Pallene is close to the 19:16 MMR with Enceladus,
  • Anthe orbits near the 11:10 MMR with Mimas,
  • Aegaeon is in the 7:6 MMR with Mimas.

As we will see, these resonances have a critical influence on the long-term stability.

Rings and arcs

Beside the main and well-known rings of Saturn, rings and arcs of dusty material orbit at other locations, but mostly in the inner system (with the exception of the Phoebe ring). In particular, the G Ring is a 9,000 km wide faint ring, which inner edge is at 166,000 km… Yep, you got it: Aegaeon is inside. Some even consider it is a G Ring object.

Methone and Anthe have dusty arcs associated with them. The difference between an arc and a ring is that an arc is longitudinally bounded, i.e. it is not extended enough to constitute a ring. The Methone arc extends over some 10°, against 20° for the Anthe arc. The material composing them is assumed to be ejecta from Methone and Anthe, respectively.

However, Pallene has a whole ring, constituted from ejecta as well.

Why sometimes a ring, and sometimes an arc? Well, it tell us something on the orbital stability of small particles in these areas. Imagine you are a particle: you are kicked from home, i.e. your satellite, but you remain close to it… for some time. Actually you drift slowly. While you drift, you are somehow shaken by the gravitational action of the other satellites, which disturb your Keplerian orbit around the planet. If you are shaken enough, then you may leave the system of Saturn. If you are not, then you can finally be anywhere on the orbit of your satellite, and since you are not the only one to have been ejected (you feel better, don’t you?), then you and your colleagues will constitute a whole ring. If you are lucky enough, you can end up on the satellite.

The longer the arc (a ring is a 360° arc), the more stable the region.

Frequency diffusion

The authors studied

  1. the stability of the dusty particles over 18 years
  2. the stability of the satellites in the system of Saturn over several hundreds of kilo-years (kyr).

For the stability of the particles, they computed the frequency diffusion index. It consists in:

  1. Simulating the motion of the particles over 18 years,
  2. Determining the main frequency of the dynamics over the first 9 years, and over the last 9 ones,
  3. Comparing these two numbers. The smaller the difference, the more stable you are.

The numerical simulations is something I have addressed in previous posts: you use a numerical integrator to simulate the motion of the particle, in considering an oblate Saturn, the oblateness being mostly due to the rings, and several satellites. Our four guys, and Janus, Epimetheus, Mimas, Enceladus, and Tethys.

How resonances destabilize an orbit

When a planetary body is trapped in a mean-motion resonance, there is an angle, which is an integer combination of angles present in its dynamics and in the dynamics of the other body, which librates. An example is the MMR Aegaeon-Mimas, which causes the angle 7λMimas-6λAegaeon-ϖMimas to librate. λ is the mean longitude, and ϖ is the longitude of the pericentre. Such a resonance is supposed to affect the dynamics of the two satellites but, given their huge mass ratio (Mimas is between 300 and 500 millions times heavier than Aegaeon), only Aegaeon is affected. The resonance is at a given location, and Aegaeon stays there.
But a given resonance has some width, and several resonant angles (we say arguments) are associated with a resonance ratio. As a consequence, several resonances may overlap, and in that case … my my my…
The small body is shaken between different locations, its eccentricity and / or inclination can be raised, until being dynamically unstable…
And in this particular region of the system of Saturn, there are many resonances, which means that the stability of the discovered body is not obvious. This is why the authors studied it.

Results

Stability of the dusty particles

The authors find that Pallene cannot clear its ring efficiently, despite its size. Actually, this zone is the most stable, wrt the dynamical environments of Anthe, Methone and Aegaeon. However, 25% of the particles constituting the G Ring should collide with Aegaeon in 18 years. This probably means that there is a mechanism, which refills the G Ring.

Stability of the satellites

From long-term numerical simulations over 400 kyr, i.e. more than one hundred millions of orbits, these 4 satellites are stable. For Pallene, the authors guarantee its stability over 64 Myr. Among the 4, this is the furthest satellite from Saturn, which makes it less affected by the resonances.

A perspective

The authors mention as a possible perspective the action of the non-gravitational forces, such as the solar radiation pressure and the plasma drag, which could affect the dynamics of such small bodies. I would like to add another one: the secular tides with Saturn, and the pull of the rings. They would induce drifts of the satellites, and of the resonances associated. The expected order of magnitude of these drifts would be an expansion of the orbits of a few km / tens of km per Myr. This seems pretty small, but not that small if we keep in mind that two resonances affecting Methone are separated by 4 km only.

This means that further results are to be expected in the upcoming years. The Cassini mission is close to its end, scheduled for 15 Sep 2017, but we are not done with exploiting its results!

To know more…

That’s it for today! Please do not forget to comment. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.

Asteroids: Centaurs

On the stability of Chariklo

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Hi there! Do you remember Chariklo? You know, this asteroid with rings (see this post on their formation). Today, we will not speak on the formation of the rings, but of the asteroid itself. I present you the paper entitled The dynamical history of Chariklo and its rings, by J. Wood, J. Horner, T. Hinse and S. Marsden, which has recently been published in The Astronomical Journal. It deals with the dynamical stability of the asteroid Chariklo as a Centaur, i.e. when Chariklo became a Centaur, and for how long.

(10199)Chariklo

Chariklo is a large asteroid orbiting between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus, i.e. it is a Centaur. It is the largest known of them, with a diameter of ~250 km. It orbits the Sun on an elliptic orbit, with an eccentricity of 0.18, inducing variations of its distance to the Sun between 13.08 (perihelion) and 18.06 au (aphelion), au being the astronomical unit, close to 150 millions km.
But the main reason why people are interested in Chariklo is the confirmed presence of rings around it, while the scientific community expected rings only around large planets. These rings were discovered during a stellar occultation, i.e. Chariklo occulting a distant star. From the multiple observations of this occultation in different locations of the Earth’s surface, 2 rings were detected, and announced in 2014. Since then, rings have been hinted around Chiron, which is the second largest one Centaur, but this detection is still doubtful.
Anyway, Chariklo contributes to the popularity of the Centaurs, and this study is focused on it.

Small bodies populations in the Solar System

The best known location of asteroids in the Solar System is the Main Belt, which is located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Actually, there are small bodies almost everywhere in the Solar System, some of them almost intersecting the orbit of the Earth. Among the other populations are:

  • the Trojan asteroids, which share the orbit of Jupiter,
  • the Centaurs, which orbit between Saturn and Uranus,
  • the Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs), which orbit beyond the orbit of Neptune. They can be split into the Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs), which have pretty regular orbits, some of them being stabilized by a resonant interaction with Neptune, and the Scattered Disc Objects (SDOs), which have larger semimajor axes and high eccentricities
  • the Oort cloud, which was theoretically predicted as a cloud of objects orbiting near the cosmological boundary of our Solar System. It may be a reservoir of comets, these small bodies with an eccentricity close to 1, which can sometimes visit our Earth.

The Centaurs are interesting from a dynamical point of view, since their orbits are not that stable, i.e. it is estimated that they remain in the Centaur zone in about 10 Myr. Since this is very small compared to the age of our Solar System (some 4.5 Gyr), the fact that Centaurs are present mean that the remaining objects are not primordial, and that there is at least one mechanism feeding this Centaur zone. In other words, the Centaurs we observe were somewhere else before, and they will one day leave this zone, but some other guys will replace them.

There are tools, indicators, helpful for studying and quantifying this (in)stability.

Stability, Lyapunov time, and MEGNO

Usually, an orbiting object is considered as “stable” (actually, we should say that its orbit is stable) if it orbits around its parent body for ever. Reasons for instability could be close encounters with other orbiting objects, these close encounters being likely to be favored by a high eccentricity, which could itself result from gravitational interactions with perturbing objects.
To study the stability, it is common to study chaos instead. And to study chaos, it is common to actually study the dependency on initial conditions, i.e. the hyperbolicity. If you hold a broom vertically on your finger, it lies in a hyperbolic equilibrium, i.e. a small deviation will dramatically change the way it will fall… but trust me, it will fall anyway.
And a good indicator of the hyperbolicity is the Lyapunov time, which is a timescale beyond which the trajectory is so much sensitive on the initial conditions that you cannot accurately predict it anymore. It will not necessarily become unstable: in some cases, known as stable chaos, you will have your orbit confined in a given zone, you do not know where it is in this zone. The Centaur zone has some kind of stable chaos (over a given timescale), which partly explains why some bodies are present there anyway.
To estimate the Lyapunov time, you have to integrate the differential equations ruling the motion of the body, and the ones ruling its tangent vector, i.e. tangent to its trajectory, which will give you the sensitivity to the initial conditions. If you are hyperbolic, then the norm of this tangent vector will grow exponentially, and from its growth rate you will have the Lyapunov time. Easy, isn’t it? Not that much. Actually this exponential growth is an asymptotic behavior, i.e. when time goes to infinity… i.e. when it is large enough. And you have to integrate over a verrrrry loooooooong time…
Fortunately, the MEGNO (Mean Exponential Growth of Nearby Orbits) indicator was invented, which converges much faster, and from which you can determine the Lyapunov time. If you are hyperbolic, the Lyapunov time is contained in the growth rate of the MEGNO, and if not, the MEGNO tends to 2, except for pretty simple systems (like the rotation of synchronous bodies), where it tends to zero.

We have now indicators, which permit to quantify the instability of the orbits. As I said, these instabilities are usually physically due to close encounters with large bodies, especially Uranus for Centaurs. This requires to define the Hill and the Roche limits.

Hill and Roche limits

First the Roche limit: where an extended body orbits too close to a massive object, the difference of attraction it feels between its different parts is stronger than its cohesion forces, and it explodes. As a consequence, satellites of giant planets survive only as rings below the Roche limit. And the outer boundary of Saturn’s rings is inner and very close to the Roche limit.

Now the Hill limit: it is the limit beyond which you feel more the attraction of the body you meet than the parent star you both orbit. This may result in being trapped around the large object (a giant planet), or more probably a strong deviation of your orbit. You could then become hyperbolic, and be ejected from the Solar System.

This paper

This study consists in backward numerical integrations of clones of Chariklo, i.e. you start with many fictitious particles (the authors had 35,937 of them) which do not interact with each others, but interact with the giant planets, and which are currently very close to the real Chariklo. Numerical integration over such a long timespan requires accurate numerical integrators, the authors used a symplectic one, i.e. which presents mathematical properties limiting the risk of divergence over long times. Why 1 Gyr? The mean timescale of survival (called here half-life, i.e. during which you lose half of your population) is estimated to be 10 Myr, so 1 Gyr is 100 half-lives. They simulated the orbits and also drew MEGNO maps, i.e. estimated the Lyapunov time with respect to the initial orbital elements of the particle. Not surprisingly, the lower the eccentricity, the more stable the orbit.

And the result is: Chariklo is in a zone of pretty stable chaos. Moreover, it is probably a Centaur since less than 20 Myr, and was a Trans-Neptunian Object before. This means that it was exterior to Neptune, while it is now interior. In a few simulations, Chariklo finds its origin in the inner Solar System, i.e. the Main Belt, which could have favored a cometary activity (when you are closer to the Sun, you are warmer, and your ice may sublimate), which could explain the origin of the rings. But the authors do not seem to privilege this scenario, as it supported by only few simulations.

What about the rings?

The authors wondered if the rings would have survived a planetary encounter, which could be a way to date them in case of no. But actually it is a yes: they found that the distance of close encounter was large enough with respect to the Hill and Roche limits to not affect the rings. So, this does not preclude an ancient origin for the rings… But a specific study of the dynamics of the rings would be required to address this issue, i.e. how stable are they around Chariklo?

To know more

And that’s it for today! Please do not forget to comment. You can also subscribe to the RSS feed, and follow me on Twitter and Facebook.