shepherd satellites

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Related to shepherd satellites: Roche limit

shepherd satellites

(shepherding satellites) Small satellites that gravitationally confine particles to a ring around a planet. In Saturn's ring system, Atlas orbits close to the outer edge of ring A, while ring F is confined by Prometheus and Pandora. Voyager 2 discovered Cordelia and Ophelia among Uranus' rings.

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The F ring is very narrow with a width of only a few hundred kilometers, and has two shepherd satellites called Prometheus and Pandora, which orbit inside and outside the ring, respectively.

In their simulations using in part computer systems at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, Hyodo and Ohtsuki revealed that the F ring and its shepherd satellites formed as these small satellites with a dense core collided and partially disintegrated.

For example, the above formation mechanism can also be applied to the rings and shepherd satellites of Uranus, which are similar to those of Saturn.