Application To Saturn's Rings
Beginning in the late 1970s, Peter Goldreich, Frank Shu, and others applied density wave theory to the rings of Saturn. Saturn's rings (particularly the A Ring) contain a great many spiral density waves and spiral bending waves excited by Lindblad resonances and vertical resonances (respectively) with Saturn's moons. The physics are largely the same as with galaxies, though spiral waves in Saturn's rings are much more tightly wound (extending a few hundred kilometers at most) due to the very large central mass (Saturn itself) compared to the mass of the disk. The Cassini mission has revealed very small density waves excited by the ring-moons Pan and Atlas and by high-order resonances with the larger moons, as well as waves whose form changes with time due to the varying orbits of Janus and Epimetheus.
Read more about this topic: Density Wave Theory
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