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I'm working on a basic simulation system which will include planets with rings, I want to create dust and asteroids within a 3D ring but I'm struggling to find any stats on the sort of height ranges a ring might have (I can find inner and outer radius estimates, but not the height ranges). Does anybody know a good resource on planetary ring stats? Or celestial bodies in general. |
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I can give you the answer for Saturn's rings because it was something I researched for a few years. The canonical number you'll get from NASA and other sources for the height of Saturn's main rings is about 1 km. However, actual N-body simulations (that I did) show that the main parts of the rings are actually significantly thinner -- sometimes only about 10-20 meters thick. You'll get finer dust particles going more above and below the ring plane with larger blocks on the plane, but planetary rings in general, close to the planet, are very thin. |
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