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by HungryGuy on August 11th, 2005

HungryGuy

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What are shepherd moons?

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  • by kanjalid on August 12th, 2005

    kanjalid

    'Shepherd' moons (or satellites) are small moons that orbit near the outer edges of planetary rings or within gaps in the rings.

    A planetary ring is a ring of dust and other small particles orbiting around a planet in a flat disc-shaped region. The most spectacular and famous planetary rings are those around Saturn, but all four of the solar system's gas giant planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune) possess ring systems of their own. Examples of shepherd satellites include Saturn's moons Prometheus and Pandora which shepherd its narrow, outer F ring.

    The gravity of shepherd moons serves to maintain a sharply defined edge to the ring; material that drifts closer to the shepherd moon's orbit is either deflected back into the body of the ring, ejected from the system, or accreted onto the moon itself.

    Peter Goldreich and Scott Tremaine first proposed the idea of shepherd moons in 1979 to explain why the rings of Uranus were so narrow.

    Adapted from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planetary_ring

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