• Title of article

    Explaining why the uranian satellites have equatorial prograde orbits despite the large planetary obliquity

  • Author/Authors

    Morbidelli، نويسنده , , A. and Tsiganis، نويسنده , , K. and Batygin، نويسنده , , K. and Crida، نويسنده , , A. and Gomes، نويسنده , , R.، نويسنده ,

  • Issue Information
    روزنامه با شماره پیاپی سال 2012
  • Pages
    4
  • From page
    737
  • To page
    740
  • Abstract
    We show that the existence of prograde equatorial satellites is consistent with a collisional tilting scenario for Uranus. In fact, if the planet was surrounded by a proto-satellite disk at the time of the tilting and a massive ring of material was temporarily placed inside the Roche radius of the planet by the collision, the proto-satellite disk would have started to precess incoherently around the equator of the planet, up to a distance greater than that of Oberon. Collisional damping would then have collapsed it into a thin equatorial disk, from which the satellites eventually formed. The fact that the orbits of the satellites are prograde requires Uranus to have had a non-negligible initial obliquity (comparable to that of Neptune) before it was finally tilted to 98°.
  • Keywords
    Dynamics , Uranus , Satellites , satellites , Formation , satellites , Uranus
  • Journal title
    Icarus
  • Serial Year
    2012
  • Journal title
    Icarus
  • Record number

    2379080