Physics of Planetary Rings: Celestial Mechanics of Continuous Media - Paperback

by Alexei M. Fridman (Author), D. Ter Haar (Translator), Nikolai N. Gorkavyi (Author)

Physics of Planetary Rings describes striking structures of the planetary rings of Saturn, Uranus, Jupiter, and Neptune: Narrow ringlets, spiral waves, and a chain of clumps. The author has contributed essential ideas to the full understanding of planetary rings via the stability analysis of dynamical systems. The combination of a high-quality description, the set of interesting illustrations, as well as the fascinating and natural presentation will make this book of considerable interest to astronomers, physicists, and mathematicians as well as students. There is no competing text for this book so far.

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Physics of Planetary Rings describes striking structures in the planetary rings of Saturn, Uranus, Jupiter and Neptune. In Saturn, the rings are stratified into thousands of ringlets united in a complex hierarchical structure with spiral waves and gaps; in Uranus, they are compressed into narrow streams; and in Neptune, one observes a chain of clumps. This abundance of dynamical structures is the result of unique instabilities and the resonance action of satellites. The authors have made decisive contributions to research into collisional, collective and resonance phenomena in planetary rings. They correctly predicted the existence of unknown Uranian satellites prior to the Voyager 2 fly-by. The combination of a high quality description, interesting illustrations and a fascinating and natural presentation will make this book of great interest to a broad readership, including astronomers, physicists, mathematicians, students and amateur astronomers.