MEXICO: The precise measurement of Saturn’s rotation has been a big challenge: Different parts of that sweltering ball of hydrogen and helium rotate at different speeds, though its rotational axis and magnetic pole are aligned. A new method devised by a researcher at Israel’s Tel Aviv University proposes a new determination of Saturn’s day length.
“In the last two decades, the standard rotation period of Saturn was accepted as that measured by Voyager 2 in the 1980s: 10 hours, 39 minutes, and 22 seconds,” said Ravit Helled. “But when the Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn 30 years later, the rotation period was measured as eight minutes longer.”
According to the new method, Saturn’s day is 10 hours, 32 minutes and 44 seconds long.
Helled’s method is based on a statistical optimization method that involved several solutions that had to reproduce Saturn’s observed properties (within their uncertainties), its mass and gravitational field. Then the researchers harnessed this information to search for the rotation period on which the most solutions converged.
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