These animations show different views of a global simulation of a system similar to Saturn's F ring. The simulations include interparticle collisions, but not particle self-gravity. There are two perturbing moons that have separations from the rings, eccentricities, and masses similar to Prometheus and Pandora, but the exact orbits are not derived from observations. The ring material begins the simulation as a circular ring with Gaussian radial distribution 14 km across.
The animations show 20 orbits each with 10 frames per orbit and 0 being the beginning of the simulation. The Prometheus-like moon is interior to the ring and moves to the right relative to the ring material while the Pandora-like moon moves to the left significantly faster. In addition to showing the optical depth for the entire simulation, the animations show several other views of the data. There are small regions at from from -1.4 to -1.6 radians and from 1.4 to 1.6 radians. For these regions the optical depth is shown along with the guiding center optical depth and the eccentricity binned in guiding center space. There are also radial profiles taken at roughly -PI/2 and PI/2. Note that for the surface plots, the units on the axes represent the exact same lengths so the aspect ratio, even on the plots showing smaller regions, are far from 1:1.
The animations are in animated GIF format for maximum compatibility, but this makes them fairly large which is why they are broken into difference pieces. More pieces will be added as the simulation progresses.
| Orbits | AVI | GIF |
|---|---|---|
0-19 |
16 MB | 26 MB |
| 20-39 | 16 MB | 32 MB |
| 40-59 | 17 MB | 38 MB |
| 60-79 | 17 MB | 39 MB |
| 80-99 | 18 MB | 41 MB |
| 100-119 | 17 MB | 43 MB |
| 120-139 | 18 MB | 42 MB |
| 140-159 | 18 MB | 41 MB |
| 160-179 | 17 MB | 40 MB |
| 180-199 | 18 MB | 41 MB |
| 200-219 | 18 MB | 40 MB |
| 220-239 | 18 MB | 37 MB |
| 240-259 | 18 MB | 37 MB |
| 260-279 | 17 MB | |
| 0-279 | 200 MB |
