Cassini CIRS: Lessons Learned from the Prime Mission and Plans for Rings Observations in the Extended Mission

Details Cassini CIRS: Lessons Learned from the Prime Mission and Plans for Rings Observations in the Extended Mission Cassini CIRS: Lessons Learned from the Prime Mission and Plans for Rings Observations in the Extended Mission

Dec 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufm.p32a..05b&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #P32A-05

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6265 Planetary Rings, 6275 Saturn

Scientific paper

During its four-year mission to Saturn Cassini has produced a great wealth of data with its twelve instruments, providing many new insights into Saturn's rings. The four-year measurement baseline of ring observations has allowed ring scientists to observe the rings during a significant portion of the southern hemisphere's summer. The Cassini Extended Mission promises the exciting possibility of extending this observation baseline through the upcoming equinox period in August 2009 and beyond. In this talk, we will discuss the lessons that we have learned from the CIRS observations of Saturn's rings during the Cassini prime mission and the scientific results that have been obtained. Ring temperatures derived from spectra taken with CIRS' FP1 detector (sensitive to wavenumbers from 10 to 600 cm-1 ) vary with the phase angle, inclination angle and local hour angle of the measurement. CIRS has also successfully recorded the occultation of an infrared star, CW Leo, while it passed behind the rings as seen from Cassini. To take advantage of this information and the discoveries of the other Cassini instruments, such as the wake-like structure in the A and B rings, as well as the new geometries offered by the Extended Mission, we have modified our observing strategy during the Extended Mission. Observations that exploit the high-inclination orbits at the beginning of the Extended Mission and the Sun's crossing of the ring plane have been planned. These new strategies will be discussed, as well as some preliminary results from the beginning of the Cassini Extended Mission. This research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA. Copyright 2008 California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged.

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