Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
Oct 2010
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.5005f&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #50.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.1008
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
The accurate description of the thermal behavior of the main rings of Saturn relies on the different energy sources accounted in models (e.g. direct and reflected solar energy, thermal contribution from Saturn and the inter-particle energy exchange), but the observed temperature strongly depends on the observation geometry (e.g. solar elevation, B', spacecraft elevation, B, phase φ and local hour angles, Ψ). The observation geometry defines what fraction of the particles that compose the rings is illuminated and what fraction is under shadows in our field of view, which yields to apparent colder or warmer particles. This variation can be described with the so-called shadowing function.
In order to study the C ring temperature behavior we use ray tracing, which can accurately and virtually reproduce a good number of optical effects with a high degree of realism, to simulate a layer of irregularly-shaped rough particles that mimics the optically thin C ring -κ=0.08-. A virtual observer is set to simulate the spacecraft motion to account for the different elevations wrt the ring plane as well as local hour angle positions. For these different geometries we analyze the shadow behavior on the simulated ring particles surfaces and obtain sets of numerical shadowing functions that account variations in B', B, φ and Ψ.
Flandes Alberto J.
Spilker Linda
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