Irregular Satellites in the Context of Planet Formation
Irregular Satellites in the Context of Planet Formation
复制标题
行星形成背景下的不规则卫星
DOI：
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发表时间：
2004
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
S. Sheppard
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
D. Jewitt;S. Sheppard
太阳系中的四颗巨行星都拥有不规则的卫星，其特征是大，高偏心率和/或高倾斜轨道。这些天体可能是从日心轨道捕获的，可能与行星形成本身有关。通过在地面望远镜上使用大画幅数字成像仪，新的观测工作显着增加了已知的不规则卫星数量，在过去几年中发现了74颗。对不规则卫星系统的一个新的观点开始出现，我们发现，测量到给定的直径的不规则卫星的数量是近似恒定的行星到行星。这是令人惊讶的，考虑到气体巨星木星和土星与冰巨星天王星和海王星（质量和成分差异小得多）的形成场景完全不同。我们讨论了不规则卫星的新结果，并展示了这些物体如何被用来区分巨行星形成的模型。
All four giant planets in the solar system possess irregular satellites, characterized by large, highly eccentric and/or highly inclined orbits. These bodies were likely captured from heliocentric orbit, probably in association with planet formation itself. Enabled by the use of large-format digital imagers on ground-based telescopes, new observational work has dramatically increased the known populations of irregular satellites, with 74 discoveries in the last few years. A new perspective on the irregular satellite systems is beginning to emerge.We find that the number of irregular satellites measured to a given diameter is approximately constant from planet to planet. This is surprising, given the radically different formation scenarios envisioned for the gas giants Jupiter and Saturn compared to the (much less massive and compositionally distinct) ice giants Uranus and Neptune. We discuss the new results on the irregular satellites and show how these objects might be used to discriminate amongst models of giant planet formation.