Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Oct 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.3601b&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #36.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.1064
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
We have used radar spectra of Titan obtained with the Arecibo Observatory's radar system to produce global maps of Titan's diffuse radar reflectivity at a wavelength of 13 cm in both circular polarizations. The data were obtained during oppositions of the Saturn system from 2000 through 2008 with sub-radar locations between latitudes 26S and 7S and well distributed in longitude [1,2]. The inversion method of Hudson and Ostro (1990) [3] was applied to reconstruct the global radar reflectivity at a resolution of roughly 10 degrees at equatorial latitudes. Titan's 13 cm radar spectrum is a combination of a specular component resulting from single surface reflections and a diffuse component resulting from multiple surface or volume scattering. The maps are constructed using only the diffuse component, which is assumed to dominate the full spectrum in the same circular (SC) polarization sense as transmitted, and at high incidence angles in the opposite circular sense (OC). The specular component, which appears in the OC polarization at low incidence angles around the sub-radar location, is not easily treated in this inversion method. The resulting reflectivity maps are compared to 2.2 cm wavelength radar reflectivity (cf. [4]) and radiometry (cf. [5]) maps from the Cassini RADAR instrument, smoothed to a similar resolution, in order to look for variations in surface structure as revealed by contrasts between these data sets. We acknowledge support from the NASA CDAP Program. Arecibo Observatory is part of the National Astronomy and Ionosphere Center, operated by Cornell University under cooperative agreement with the NSF.
[1] Black et al., 2010 Icarus, In press. [2] Campbell et al., 2003 Science 302, 431. [3] Hudson & Ostro, 1990, JGR 95, 10947. [4] Wye et al., 2007, Icarus 188, 367. [5] Janssen et al., 2009, Icarus 200, 222.
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