TIME VARIABILITY IN THE OUTER EDGE OF SATURN'S A-RING REVEALED BY CASSINI IMAGING

We examine the outer edge of Saturn's A-ring, whose shape is strongly influenced by the co-orbital satellites Janus and Epimetheus, during the period from day 2005-121 to day 2009-036. Twenty-four Cassini imaging data sets are used, each one giving a picture of the ring during a short interval, allowing us to explore its time variability in detail for the first time. We find that the ring experienced a period of adjustment within ~8 months of the 2006 January co-orbital swap, corresponding to the interval during which the two satellites were within about 60° of one another. Outside that adjustment period, the ring is dominated by an m = 7 pattern, as expected near a 7:6 inner Lindblad resonance, but the alignment is opposite in phase to that predicted for isolated test particles, and the amplitude of the radial distortion varies with time. We find that the amplitude variation corresponds to a beat pattern between the perturbations from the two satellites as would be expected if the responses add linearly. However, we also find deviations of limited azimuthal extent from the simple m = 7 pattern. Some of the additional structure may arise from coupling between the two excited modes in the ring, but the origin of these features is still under investigation.