Asri-unix.685 net.space utcsrgv!utzoo!decvax!ucbvax!ARPAVAX:C70:sri-unix!knutsen@SRI-UNIX Wed Feb 3 21:55:29 1982 Saturnian moons Here is another interesting thing about the moons, extracted from the news story: -------- One of the confirmed little moons and one of the ''possible'' satellites are companions of the larger moon, Tethys, and appear to move in what Synnott referred to as ''horseshoe'' orbits. Satellites in horseshoe orbits trade orbits as they approach each other, the NASA spokesman said. -------- From the name "horseshoe", I assume the moons actually loop around each other and change direction, rather than deflecting slightly and following the path the other moon approached in. This might be interesting to watch, especially if one were (firmly) attached to one of the moons. However my intuition rebels against the idea. Is there really enough gravitational attraction to do this? Would such an arrangement be stable? What would the tides be like? ----------------------------------------------------------------- gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/ This Usenet Oldnews Archive article may be copied and distributed freely, provided: 1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles. 2. The following notice remains appended to each copy: The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.