Spectral and Radiative Transfer modeling of Saturn's Rings in the Far Ultraviolet from Cassini UVIS Spectra

Details Spectral and Radiative Transfer modeling of Saturn's Rings in the Far Ultraviolet from Cassini UVIS Spectra Spectral and Radiative Transfer modeling of Saturn's Rings in the Far Ultraviolet from Cassini UVIS Spectra

Dec 2011

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011agufm.p13b1667b&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2011, abstract #P13B-1667

Physics

[6265] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Planetary Rings, [6275] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Saturn

Scientific paper

Saturn's main rings show an absorption feature in reflectance (I/F) due to water ice at 165 nm. The magnitude of I/F above and below the absorption feature contains information pertaining to the ring particle albedo and when compared to a range of phase angles contains information about the ring particle phase function. The spectral location of the absorption feature contains information about the mean path length (L) that a photon travels within the ice matrix because a greater path length results in shifting the absorption edge towards longer wavelengths. Modeling the ring brightness in order to retrieve these physical parameters is difficult because of wake structure within the A and B rings, unknown volume filling factors, unknown non-water ice components, and multiple scattering effects. We have made use of the classical Chandrasekhar (Dover, New York, 1960) radiative transfer model for comparing with the C ring and the Cassini Division brightness. For the A and B rings we replaced the scattering function from the Chandrasekhar equation with a self-gravity wake model for the A and B rings derived from stellar occultations (Colwell, Geophys. Res. Lett. 33, 2006, 7201; Colwell, Icarus 190, 2007, 127-144). We assumed that the self-gravity wake model accounted for both the wake structure and the volume filling factor. The free parameters were the ring particle bond albedo (A) and the ring particle asymmetry parameter (g). We scaled I/F from 152-185 nm to a spectral albedo model (Shkuratov, Icarus 137, 1999, 235-246) to retrieve L. We conclude from these modeling efforts that the ring particle albedo in the FUV follows a consistent trend when compared to the ring particle albedo at longer wavelengths and that the albedo below the water ice absorption feature is affected as much by non-water ice components as it is water ice. We also conclude that the rings are highly backscattering in the FUV and that the scattering centers in the FUV are typically within the first few microns of ring material.

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