AAS 195th Meeting, January 2000
Session 108. Asteroids, etc.
Display, Saturday, January 15, 2000, 9:20am-4:00pm, Grand Hall

[Previous] | [Session 108] | [Next]


[108.09] N-body Simulation of the Formation of Titan and Hyperion

M.H. Lee, S.J. Peale (UCSB)

A tidal origin for the 4:3 orbital resonance of Saturn's satellites Titan and Hyperion suffers from the requirement that the effective Q of Saturn for Titan induced tides must be much smaller than the minimum effective Q established for Mimas induced tides. Even if there was sufficient tidal expansion of the orbit of Titan, Hyperion would have suffered close encounters with Titan, unless the satellites were trapped in a secular resonance which kept the periapses of the orbits nearly aligned during the tidal approach (Peale 1995). An alternative scenario is that Hyperion formed by the accretion of satellitesimals within the orbital resonance. We investigate the viability of this alternative scenario using the symplectic integrator SyMBA (Duncan, Levison, & Lee 1998). We have performed N-body simulations of the Titan region of phase space that constrain the formation timescale of Titan. We are performing N-body simulations of the accretion of satellitesimals in the Hyperion region of phase space, with Titan growing to its current mass over a finite period of time. The results of these simulations will be presented.


[Previous] | [Session 108] | [Next]