Saturn Symposium Ring Chapter

Dear Colleagues:

As you may know, the Symposium “Saturn after Cassini/Huygens” will be held in London, 28 July – 1 August 2008. The Symposium will consist of invited and contributed papers. A companion book will be published by Springer, to be edited by Michele Dougherty, Tom Krimigis and Larry Esposito. The book will include review chapters from the invited oral papers. Contributed papers will be published in a special issue of one or more journals. The book will be approximately 750 pages in length, covering the planet Saturn, its magnetosphere, rings and icy satellites. Titan will be the topic of another conference. The lead authors of the invited chapters will be selected by the editors in September 2007.

We are now soliciting authors to write the five rings chapters described below.

Section 4: Rings

• Main ring structure (Facts & observations chapter: brief history including groundbased, HST and VGR; overview of structure and dimensions including both diffuse and main rings; all radial, azimuthal, and vertical structure as constrained by observations). E ring structure from remote sensing and in-situ measurements.

• Ring dynamical processes (Theory chapter: basics of key processes responsible for structure such as spiral resonant waves, self-gravity and moonlet wakes, viscosity and viscous overstabilities, shepherding, meteoroid bombardment, propellers, spoke formation processes, ring-magnetosphere/ionosphere interactions (except as related to diffuse rings))

• Main ring composition and size distribution (inc. main ring atmosphere; brief history, emphasize current state (inc. ground-based, HST, VGR), include processes which primarily affect ring particle size distribution and composition)

• Diffuse Rings: Structure, composition and dynamics (tutorial level material on electrodynamics of charged particles, dynamics and composition of G, E rings; specific interactions with Enceladus; erosional formation of dust rings). Dust-magnetosere interactions as they pertain to dust, size distribution, dust composition and rings as sources of submicron stream particles.

• Origin and evolution of the ring system (Theoretically oriented chapter noting variety of possibilities and identifying discriminating observations; role of moonlets (growth in-situ or not, impact disruption or not, Roche lobe filling, collisional mutual evolution, orbital chaos etc); timescales; young ring problems; plausible origin scenarios)

You may volunteer to lead a chapter, contribute to a chapter or propose a different chapter. Tell us if you are unwilling to be a lead author. Briefly describe your contribution and any more detailed thoughts that may differ from the above descriptions. The Editorial Committee for rings (Esposito, Cuzzi, Gruen) will recommend chapter authors to the Editors, who plan to invite the authors in September 2007. Chapters will be about 25 pages each, in 8.5 by 11 inch format. First drafts of the chapters will be due at the Symposium (July 2008), with final versions due January 2009. On this schedule, the book would be published in mid 2009.

To volunteer, send your statement of interest to Laura Bloom:

on or before 3 August 2007.

We thank you for your interest and willingness to contribute to this Symposium and book. With best regards,

Larry Esposito
Jeff Cuzzi
Eberhard Gruen

Contact:
Laura Bloom
LASP/University of Colorado
1234 Innovation Drive
BOULDER, CO 80303
Phone: 303-492-6827
Fax: 303-492-1132