Cassini CIRS temperature variations with changing solar elevation in Saturn's rings

Details Cassini CIRS temperature variations with changing solar elevation in Saturn's rings Cassini CIRS temperature variations with changing solar elevation in Saturn's rings

Sep 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008epsc.conf..755s&link_type=abstract

European Planetary Science Congress 2008, Proceedings of the conference held 21-25 September, 2008 in Münster, Germany. Online a

Computer Science

Scientific paper

The Cassini Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) has acquired an extensive set of thermal measurements of Saturn's main rings (A, B, C and Cassini Division) during four years in orbit around Saturn. These thermal measurements include information on ring temperature as well as filling factor. Temperatures were retrieved for the lit and unlit rings over a variety of ring geometries that include solar phase angle, spacecraft elevation, solar elevation and local hour angle. The largest temperature changes on the lit face of the rings are driven by variations in phase angle while differences in temperature with changing spacecraft elevation and local time are a secondary effect [1, 2, 3]. After taking phase angle and local time effects into account, decreases in ring temperature with decreasing solar elevation are seen on both the lit and unlit faces of the rings. For the lit rings, temperature decreases of 2-4 K are observed in the C ring and larger decreases, 7-10 K and 10-13 K, are observed in the A and B rings respectively. Our thermal data cover a range of solar elevations from -23° to -12° (south side of the rings). The optically thinnest and optically thickest regions of the rings show the best fits to our two end member models. We present a preliminary report on ring temperature variations as a function of solar elevation in Saturn's rings.

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