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Science 10 April 1981:
Vol. 212. no. 4491, pp. 163 - 191
DOI: 10.1126/science.212.4491.163
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Articles

Encounter with Saturn: Voyager 1 Imaging Science Results

BRADFORD A. SMITH 1, LAURENCE SODERBLOM 2, RETA BEEBE 3, JOSEPH BOYCE 4, GEOFFERY BRIGGS 4, ANNE BUNKER 5, STEWART A. COLLINS 5, CANDICE J. HANSEN 5, TORRENCE V. JOHNSON 5, JIM L. MITCHELL 5, RICHARD J. TERRILE 5, MICHAEL CARR 6, ALLEN F. COOK II 7, JEFFREY CUZZI 8, JAMES B. POLLACK 8, G. EDWARD DANIELSON 9, ANDREW INGERSOLL 9, MERTON E. DAVIES 10, GARRY E. HUNT 11, HAROLD MASURSKY 12, EUGENE SHOEMAKER 12, DAVID MORRISON 13, TOBIAS OWEN 14, CARL SAGAN 15, JOSEPH VEVERKA 15, ROBERT STROM 16, and VERNER E. SUOMI 17

1 Department of Planetary Sciences, University of Arizona, Tucson 85721
2 U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff, Arizona 86001
3 Department of Astronomy, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces 88003
4 NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C. 20546
5 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California 91109
6 U.S. Geological Survey, Menlo Park, California 94025
7 Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
8 NASA/Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California 94035
9 Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena 91125
10 Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, California 90406
11 University College London, London WC 1E 6BT, England
12 U.S. Geological Survey, Flagstaff
13 Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, Honolulu 96822
14 Department of Earth and Space Sciences, State University of New York, Stony Brook 11790
15 Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853
16 Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona
17 University of Wisconsin, Madison 53706

As Voyager 1 flew through the Saturn system it returned photographs revealing many new and surprising characteristics of this complicated community of bodies. Saturn's atmosphere has numerous, low-contrast, discrete cloud features and a pattern of circulation significantly different from that of Jupiter. Titan is shrouded in a haze layer that varies in thickness and appearance. Among the icy satellites there is considerable variety in density, albedo, and surface morphology and substantial evidence for endogenic surface modification. Trends in density and crater characteristics are quite unlike those of the Galilean satellites. Small inner satellites, three of which were discovered in Voyager images, interact gravitationally with one another and with the ring particles in ways not observed elsewhere in the solar system. Saturn's broad A, B, and C rings contain hundreds of "ringlets," and in the densest portion of the B ring there are numerous nonaxisymmetric features. The narrow F ring has three components which, in at least one instance, are kinked and crisscrossed. Two rings are observed beyond the F ring, and material is seen between the C ring and the planet.

Submitted on February 11, 1981
Revised on February 24, 1981


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