J.C.Maxwell's Study of the Stability of Saturn's Rings
Joachim Köppen Kiel/Strasbourg Summer 2008
Here are four JAVA applets that visualize several aspects of Maxwell's
study from 1856:
- Solid Ring: the evolution of a
uniform solid ring around Saturn
- my Spirograph version of his mechanical
demonstrator of the perturbation modes
- Full N-body Simulation of the movements of
a number of moons in circular orbit around Saturn, showing the
gravitational origin of the modes of the first order perturbations,
as well as the appearance of non-linear perturbations and their
results
- Non-Uniform Solid Ring: the evolution of
a solid ring around Saturn of nearly arbitrary shape (this applet
is still under development ...!)
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last update: 9 Oct. 2008 J.Köppen