On the rotation of the Trojan satellites of Saturn
Résumé
The images of Saturn's satellites Janus and Epimetheus obtained by the Cassini spacecraft provide data on their rotational behavior and stimulate the elaboration of physical librations models [1,2,3]. During its journey in the Saturnian system, Cassini spacecraft accumulates the observational data and it will be possible to determine the rotational parameters of several satellites. Here, we focus on co-orbital (Trojan) satellites Telesto, Calypso, Helene and Polydeuces, in addition to Janus and Epimetheus. Indeed, Telesto and Calypso orbit around the L4 and L5 Lagrange points of Saturn-Tethys while Helene and Polydeuces are co-orbitals of Dione. The goal of this study is to understand how the departure from the Keplerian motion induced by the perturbations of the co-orbital body influence the rotation of these satellites. To this aim, we generalize the analytical methods describing the rotational motion of Janus and Epimetheus [3] and apply them to the co-orbitals of Tethys and Dione.