Comments on: Edgeways http://asymptotia.com/2007/08/24/edgeways/ Wed, 07 Jan 2009 19:27:37 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5.1 By: Amara http://asymptotia.com/2007/08/24/edgeways/#comment-73536 Amara Sat, 25 Aug 2007 04:46:15 +0000 http://asymptotia.com/2007/08/24/edgeways/#comment-73536 Clifford: Hobby-ist is different from ring expert! And alot has happened in the planetary rings field since the Voyager days. Remember I was a scientific programmer for astronomers for almost 20 years (with my jobs driving my education) before I got my PhD. One big missing gap (and I'm sure I can think of others): I did not work on planetary atmospheres, i.e. radiative transfer problems. Clifford: Hobby-ist is different from ring expert! And alot has happened in the planetary rings field since the Voyager days. Remember I was a scientific programmer for astronomers for almost 20 years (with my jobs driving my education) before I got my PhD. One big missing gap (and I’m sure I can think of others): I did not work on planetary atmospheres, i.e. radiative transfer problems.

]]> By: Clifford http://asymptotia.com/2007/08/24/edgeways/#comment-73463 Clifford Fri, 24 Aug 2007 22:37:22 +0000 http://asymptotia.com/2007/08/24/edgeways/#comment-73463 Thanks Amara... I did not know you were a ring expert. Is there any aspect of solar system physics you have not worked on?! -cvj Thanks Amara… I did not know you were a ring expert. Is there any aspect of solar system physics you have not worked on?!

-cvj

]]> By: Amara http://asymptotia.com/2007/08/24/edgeways/#comment-73446 Amara Fri, 24 Aug 2007 19:49:27 +0000 http://asymptotia.com/2007/08/24/edgeways/#comment-73446 I have a special place in my heart for the Uranian rings. For ten years, as a kind of spare-time hobby (i.e. most of the time unpaid, in between my school and paid jobs), I made an analysis of the Voyager 2 PPS, RSS, and radio science Uranian ring data, in particular, studying the change of eccentricity of the Epsilon ring, the largest of the rings. At the time, it was the most interesting ring because its sharp edges indicated that some gravitational bounding process was in effect, but those theories were not well-tested yet. (Ah ha! now I know that electrostatic braking could presumeably do the same thing.) And Mark Showalter was my coauthor on the work, which was finally published in 1995 in <a href="http://adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-bib_query?1995AJ%2E%2E%2E%2E109%2E2262G&db_key=AST" rel="nofollow">AJ</a>, so I couldn't have done any better with an expert guiding my work. I would say that Mark is the world's best observational planetary ring astronomer, and he just keeps getting better and better. Since the Voyager days, the Keck (from the ground) with its adaptive optics is producing as good, if not better, data than Voyager. Imke de Pater, is the Keck rings expert, and, with Mark Showalter providing complementary data from the HST, have already have found several new Uranian rings. And more, with their dynamics colleague: Jack Lissauer, they have tracked the interactions of the many new Uranian moonlets and rings, resonances and all. The Uranian rings are a fascinating young system evolving on time scales from 10 to 10^7 years of dusty rings, big particle rings, embedded moonlets, .... it has everything! I have a special place in my heart for the Uranian rings. For ten years, as a kind of spare-time hobby (i.e. most of the time unpaid, in between my school and paid jobs), I made an analysis of the Voyager 2 PPS, RSS, and radio science Uranian ring data, in particular, studying the change of eccentricity of the Epsilon ring, the largest of the rings. At the time, it was the most interesting ring because its sharp edges indicated that some gravitational bounding process was in effect, but those theories were not well-tested yet. (Ah ha! now I know that electrostatic braking could presumeably do the same thing.) And Mark Showalter was my coauthor on the work, which was finally published in 1995 in AJ, so I couldn’t have done any better with an expert guiding my work. I would say that Mark is the world’s best observational planetary ring astronomer, and he just keeps getting better and better.

Since the Voyager days, the Keck (from the ground) with its adaptive optics is producing as good, if not better, data than Voyager. Imke de Pater, is the Keck rings expert, and, with Mark Showalter providing complementary data from the HST, have already have found several new Uranian rings. And more, with their dynamics colleague: Jack Lissauer, they have tracked the interactions of the many new Uranian moonlets and rings, resonances and all. The Uranian rings are a fascinating young system evolving on time scales from 10 to 10^7 years of dusty rings, big particle rings, embedded moonlets, …. it has everything!

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