Matthew Tiscareno

Specialty Areas

Planetary Sciences

Research Projects

Cassini Imaging Science Subsystem

Biography

Dr. Tiscareno studies Saturn's Rings as an associate of the Cassini Imaging Team. He is an expert on the waves that propagate through the rings and on the irregularly-shaped scalloped edges of ring gaps, which he uses to infer properties of the disk and the bodies that perturb it. He led the discovery of hundreds of small moonlets embedded in the rings, seen indirectly by the "propeller"-shaped disturbance they create in the surrounding ring material. Drawing on the analogy between moonlets embedded in Saturn's rings, and proto-planets embedded in the disk of our early solar system, Tiscareno is currently studying in more detatil the "propeller"-shaped structure to learn about the underlying disk-moonlet interactions, and is tracking the propellers through time to study their orbital evolution.

Dr. Tiscareno is more generally interested in the many applications of orbital and rotational dynamics. His recent work includes a study of the unusual rotation of moons such as Saturn's Epimetheus, and the long-term evolution of resonant orbits in the Kuiper Belt.

Selected Publications

• Physical characteristics and non-keplerian orbital motion of 'propeller' moons. Tiscareno, Burns, Sremcevic, Beurle, Hedman, Cooper, Milano, Evans, Porco, Spitale, and Weiss, 2010, Astrophys. J. Lett. 718, L92-L96 (ADS) (arXiv:1007.1008).

• Cassini imaging search rules out rings around Rhea. Tiscareno, Burns, Cuzzi,and Hedman, 2010, Geophys. Res. Lett. 37, L14205 (ADS) (arXiv:1008.1764).

• An analytic parameterization of self-gravity wakes in Saturn's rings, with application to occultations and propellers. Tiscareno, Perrine, Richardson, Hedman, Weiss, Porco, and Burns, 2010, Astron. J. 139, 492-503 (ADS) (arXiv:0911.3161).

• The rotation of Janus and Epimetheus. Tiscareno, Thomas, and Burns, 2009, Icarus 204, 254-261 (ADS) (arXiv:0904.3515).

• Chaotic diffusion of resonant Kuiper Belt objects. Tiscareno and Malhotra, 2008, Astron. J. 138, 827-837 (ADS) (arXiv:0807.2835).

• The population of propellers in Saturn's A ring. Tiscareno, Burns, Hedman, and Porco, 2008, Astron. J., 135, 1083-1091 (ADS) (arXiv:0710.4547).

• Cassini imaging of Saturn's rings II: A wavelet technique for analysis of density waves and other radial structure in the rings. Tiscareno, Burns,Nicholson, Hedman, and Porco, 2007, Icarus 189, 14-34 (ADS) (arXiv:astro-ph/0610242).

• Unravelling temporal variability in Saturn's spiral density waves: Results and predictions. Tiscareno, Nicholson, Burns, Hedman, and Porco, 2006, Astrophys. J. Lett. 651, L65-L68 (ADS) (arXiv:astro-ph/0609242).

• 100-metre-diameter moonlets in Saturn's A ring from observat ions of 'propeller' structures. Tiscareno, Burns, Hedman, Porco, Weiss, Dones, Richardson and Murray, 2006, Nature 440, 648-650(ADS) (podcast here).

• The dynamics of known Centaurs. Tiscareno and Malhotra, 2003, Astron. J. 126, 3122-3131 (ADS) (arXiv:astro-ph/0211076).