P51B-2063
Studies of Saturn’s Main Rings at Multiple Wavelengths

Friday, 18 December 2015
Poster Hall (Moscone South)
Linda Joyce Spilker1, Estelle Deau2, Gianrico Filacchione3, Ryuji Morishima2, Matthew M Hedman4, Phil d Nicholson5, Joshua E Colwell6, Eric Todd Bradley6, Mark Showalter7, Stuart Pilorz7 and Shawn M Brooks8, (1)NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Planetary Science, Pasadena, CA, United States, (2)NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States, (3)IAPS-INAF, Rome, Italy, (4)University of Idaho, Physics, Moscow, ID, United States, (5)Cornell University, Dept. of Astronomy, Ithaca, NY, United States, (6)University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL, United States, (7)SETI Institute Mountain View, Mountain View, CA, United States, (8)Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, United States
Abstract:
A wealth of information about the characteristics of Saturn’s ring particles and their regolith can be obtained by modeling the changes in their brightness, color and temperature with changing viewing geometry over a wide range of wavelengths, from ultraviolet through the thermal infrared. Data from Cassini’s Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS), Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) and Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS) are jointly studied using data from the lit and unlit main rings at multiple geometries and solar elevations over 11 years of the Cassini mission. Using multi-wavelength data sets allow us to test different thermal models by combining the effects of particle albedo, regolith grain size and surface roughness with thermal emissivity and inertia, particle spin rate and spin axis orientation.

The CIRS temperature and ISS color variations are confined primarily to phase angle over a range of solar elevations with only small differences from changing spacecraft elevation. Color and temperature dependence with varying solar elevation angle are also observed. Brightness dependence with changing solar elevation angle and phase angle is observed with UVIS.

VIMS observations show that the IR ice absorption band depths are a very weak function of phase angle, out to ~140 deg phase, suggesting that interparticle light scattering is relatively unimportant except at very high phase angles. These results imply that the individual properties of the ring particles may play a larger role than the collective properties of the rings, in particular at visible wavelengths. The temperature and color variation with phase angle may be a result of scattering within the regolith and on possibly rough surfaces of the clumps, as well as a contribution from scattering between individual particles in a many-particle-thick layer. Preliminary results from our joint studies will be presented.

This research was carried out in part at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA. Copyright 2015 California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship is acknowledged.

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