Over the past few decades, various conjectures were advanced that Saturns rings are Cantor-like sets, although no convincing fractal analysis of actual images has ever appeared. We focus on the images sent by the Cassini spacecraft mission: slide #42 Mapping Clumps in Saturns Rings and slide #54 Scattered Sunshine. Using the box-counting method, we determine the fractal dimension of rings seen here (and in several other images from the same source) to be consistently about 1.6~1.7. This supports many conjectures put forth over several decades that Saturns rings are indeed fractal.
تحميل البحث