Looking For Thermal IR Polarization In Saturn's Rings With Cassini/CIRS

Details Looking For Thermal IR Polarization In Saturn's Rings With Cassini/CIRS Looking For Thermal IR Polarization In Saturn's Rings With Cassini/CIRS

Oct 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007dps....39.2602e&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #39, #26.02; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 39, p.460

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The Cassini Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) FP1 channel is a polarizing interferometer covering the spectral range from 10 to 600 cm-1. By rotating the instrument about its optical axis, it is possible to measure the IR polarization of target objects over that spectral range. This requires the FP1 footprint on the rings, the emission angle, and the phase angle to be fairly constant for the duration of the observation.
With these constraints, we turned two composition observations, both allocated long periods of time for sitting-and-staring, into polarization observations. The time was divided equally amongst observations of the A, B, and C rings, with one observation taking place on the lit side and the other on the unlit side. We chose relative rotations of 0, 30, and 60 degrees (future observations will use 0, 45, 90, and 135 degree rotations).
For each ring, we will determine the Stokes Vector (I, Q, U, V) and the degree of polarization, (Q+U+V)/I. We will also examine the degree to which the temperature and emissivity varies with the orientation of the field of view.
One of the observation takes place at low phase angles. At low phase angles, the filling factor of the C-Ring has been shown to increase steeply with decreasing spacecraft elevation (Altobelli, et al., 2007). We will determine the limitations of this physical effect on the determination of the polarization of the C-ring.
Successful measurements should provide information on the microscopic roughness of ring particles. We will report on results of these observations. For a similar analysis pertaining to Iapetus' surface, see J. C. Pearl, et al. (this meeting).
The research described in this paper was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

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