Moons of Saturn
This integration shows a close-up of the Saturn system including a
selection of the better known satellites.
Closest to the planet are 4 Ring Shepherds Pan, Atlas, Prometheus
and Pandora (blue). The gravitational effects of these small
satellites help to keep Saturn's rings and ring gaps sharply defined.
Janus and Epimetheus (pink) are also quite close to the planet.
They are co-orbital and have almost exactly the same period. Every 4
years or so they draw close together. To see what happens watch
this
integration.
We move out past Mimas (blue) and Enceladus (yellow) to the
co-orbital threesome of Tethys (white) with Telesto and Calypso
(green). Tethys is the main satellite in this orbit while Telesto and
Calypso are its "Trojan Moons", placed at the leading and following
Lagrange points.
Further out we see the co-orbital pair Dione (red, the main
satellite) and Helene (green, Trojan to Dione).
Zooming further out we can see Rhea (yellow), Titan ( purple),
Hyperion (blue), Iapetus (grey) and Phoebe (yellow).
This integration includes the 1) Sun 2)Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune
system baricentres 3)Saturn body and the satellites mentioned. The
integration step is very small to maintain reasonable accuracy of the
inner satellites.
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