Other
Scientific paper
Jan 2011
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2011aas...21743501b&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #217, #435.01; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 43, 2011
Other
Scientific paper
Among the curious optical properties of Satun's rings, one is the fact that they appear to be composed of primarily water ice with very few contaminants. This work is aimed at determining if the rings are capable of hiding other material (namely silicates) in such a way that it does not appear in the spectrometry of the rings. Our research was focused on finding patterns in the amount of silicates visible for a variable percent total particle silicate mix (0.5-4%) and surface density (40 and 60 g/cm^2 respectively). This was accomplished using N- body spherical particle simulations that model interactions between ring particles. These simulations were then input into a data analysis program designed called SwiftVis, which also allowed ray tracing of incoming photons to give us an idea of what we would see. Our results indicate thus far that the surface density of the rings (which varies between the different sections of the rings) has the largest contribution to variation in optical structure. Quantitatively determining whether a silicate particle is visible simply requires knowledge of the last particle to reflect light back to the camera. For a 40 g/cm^2 ring system, the amount of silicates that show up in the photometry is about 25% of the original percentage (i.e for a 1% total fraction the amount of silicates visible is .25% of the total number of particles). These values vary widely from ring to ring as the surface density changes.
Burdon Crosby
Lewis Mark C.
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