The F‐ring of Saturn

One of the startling discoveries made by the Voyager Saturn flyby is the existence of a split and twisted F‐ring located outside of the well known A‐ring of this planet. It is proposed that the twist is the result of the action of Saturn's magnetic field on charged particles in the F‐ring. A quantitative argument shows that small particles will be deflected away from a circular orbit maintained by the larger particles. The two "shepherding" satellites prevent the small particles from being lost entirely from the ring.