Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Oct 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.2208b&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #22.08; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.989
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The Cassini Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS) has acquired FUV spectra of the A, B, and C rings as well as the Cassini Division. The normalized reflectance (I/F) in all four regions shows a characteristic water ice absorption feature edge near 1650 Å. The spectral location and shape of the absorption feature has been compared to both Hapke and Shkuratov reflectance models in order to retrieve the ring particle scattering properties. One modeled parameter, the photon mean path length (L), is a measure of the amount of water ice that incident solar photons traverse before exiting the ring particles in the direction of the detector. For larger path lengths the spectral location of the absorption edge shifts towards longer wavelengths. This shift is due to the spectral variation of the absorption coefficient, which for water ice decreases dramatically for wavelengths above 1600 Å. Typical values of L are less than 10 microns which implies that FUV photons only penetrate the outermost regolith grains covering the ring particles. These small L values may be the result of scattering centers within a regolith ice grain consisting of cracks or contaminants and thus do not necessarily indicate the sizes of ice grains. Making use of the large number of observations made by UVIS since 2004 the retrieved value of L shows a trend with phase angle. A possible explanation for this effect is the relative importance of multiple scattering at different phase angles. We will discuss these results as well as a comparison of the two models.
Bradley Eric Todd
Colwell Joshua E.
Esposito W. L. W. L.
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