The Rings of Uranus: Shepherded, or Not?

I investigate the hypothesis that small, unseen moons are “shepherding” the main rings of Uranus. The ring edges are expected to be confined at the discrete locations of Lindblad resonances, where the moon’s influence produces a wavy edge. For a narrow, optically thick ring, this interaction manifests itself as a periodic variation in the ring’s brightness. Under many circumstances, the induced pattern in the ring should be far more detectable than the moon itself. I will re-analyze images from Voyager and the Hubble Space Telescope to seek these patterns, and thereby place new constraints on the population of Uranian shepherd moons.