Constraints on Particle Sizes in Saturn's G Ring from Ring Plane Crossing Observations

Details Constraints on Particle Sizes in Saturn's G Ring from Ring Plane Crossing Observations Constraints on Particle Sizes in Saturn's G Ring from Ring Plane Crossing Observations

Sep 1996

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1996dps....28.1811t&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #28, #18.11; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 28, p.1125

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

1

Scientific paper

The ring plane crossings in 1995--96 allowed earth-based observations of Saturn's diffuse rings (Nicholson et al., Nature 272, 1996; De Pater et al. Icarus 121, 1996) at a phase angle of alpha ~ 5 deg . We calculate the G ring reflectance for steady state distributions of dust to km-sized bodies from a range of physical models which track the evolution of the G ring from its initial formation following the disruption of a progenitor satellite (Canup & Esposito 1996, \ Icarus,\ in press). We model scattering from the ring's small particles using an exact T-matrix method for nonspherical, absorptive particles (Mishchenko et al. 1996, \ JGR Atmo., in press), large particles using the phase function and spectrum of Europa, and intermediate particles using a linear combination of the small and large limits. Two distinct particle size distributions from the CE96 model fit the observed spectrum. The first is that of a dusty ring, with the majority of ring reflectance in dust particles of relatedly shallow power law size distribution exponent q ~ 2.5. The second has equal reflectances from a) dust in the range q ~ 3.5 -- 6.5 and b) macroscopic bodies > 1 mm. In this second case, the respective slightly blue and red components combine to form the observed relatively flat spectrum. Although light scattering in backscatter is not sufficient to completely constrain the G ring size distribution, the distributions predicted by the CE96 model can explain the earth-based observations.

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