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Science 29 January 1982:
Vol. 215. no. 4532, pp. 504 - 537
DOI: 10.1126/science.215.4532.504
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Articles

A New Look at the Saturn System: The Voyager 2 Images

BRADFORD A. SMITH 1, LAURENCE SODERBLOM 2, RAYMOND BATSON 2, PATRICIA BRIDGES 2, JAY INGE 2, HAROLD MASURSKY 2, EUGENE SHOEMAKER 2, RETA BEEBE 3, JOSEPH BOYCE 4, GEOFFREY 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, ALLAN F. COOK II 6, JEFFREY CUZZI 7, JAMES B. POLLACK 7, G. EDWARD DANIELSON 8, ANDREW P. INGERSOLL 8, MERTON E. DAVIES 9, GARRY E. HUNT 10, DAVID MORRISON 11, TOBIAS OWEN 12, CARL SAGAN 13, JOSEPH VEVERKA 13, ROBERT STROM 14, and VERNER E. SUOMI 15

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 Center for Astrophysics, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138
7 NASA/Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, California 94035
8 Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena 91125
9 Rand Corporation, Santa Monica, California 90406
10 University College London, London WC IE 6BT, England
11 Institute for Astronomy, University of Hawaii, Honolulu 96822
12 Department of Earth and Space Sciences, State University of New York, Stony Brook 11790
13 Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853
14 Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona, Tucson 85721
15 University of Wisconsin, Madison 53706

Voyager 2 photography has complemented that of Voyager I in revealing many additional characteristics of Saturn and its satellites and rings. Saturn's atmosphere contains persistent oval cloud features reminiscent of features on Jupiter. Smaller irregular features track out a pattern of zonal winds that is symmetric about Saturn's equator and appears to extend to great depth. Winds are predominantly eastward and reach 500 meters per second at the equator. Titan has several haze layers with significantly varying optical properties and a northern polar "collar" that is dark at short wavelengths. Several satellites have been photographed at substantially improved resolution. Enceladus' surface ranges from old, densely cratered terrain to relatively young, uncratered plains crossed by grooves and faults. Tethys has a crater 400 kilometers in diameter whose floor has domed to match Tethys' surface curvature and a deep trench that extends at least 270° around Tethys' circumference. Hyperion is cratered and irregular in shape. Iapetus' bright, trailing hemisphere includes several dark-floored craters, and Phoebe has a very low albedo and rotates in the direction opposite to that of its orbital revolution with a period of 9 hours. Within Saturn's rings, the "birth" of a spoke has been observed, and surprising azimuthal and time variability is found in the ringlet structure of the outer B ring. These observations lead to speculations about Saturn's internal structure and about the collisional and thermal history of the rings and satellites.

Submitted on November 30, 1981


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