Cassini VIMS at Saturn

Details Cassini VIMS at Saturn Cassini VIMS at Saturn

May 2005

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005agusm.p13a..01b&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2005, abstract #P13A-01

Mathematics

Logic

6275 Saturn

Scientific paper

The Cassini Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) is an imaging spectrometer on the Cassini spacecraft that covers the spectral range of 0.35-5.2 μm in 352 spectral channels, a nominal instantaneous field of view of 0.5 mrad and an image format of 64x64 pixels. It has completed it's first 7 months in orbit around Saturn. During that time it has made extensive observations of Saturn's rings, it's icy satellites, in particular Phoebe and Iapetus, and had 1 distant and 2 close flybys of Titan. The surface of Phoebe is dominated by water ice and bound water, but it has significant amounts of ferrous-iron-bearing silicates, CO2 as liquid or gaseous inclusions in minerals, organics, CN compounds and several as yet unidentified compounds. Phoebe's surface composition is consistent with other outer solar system objects Iapetus shows the presence of water ice, bound water, CO2 complexed in a similar fashion as on Phoebe, organics and several as yet unidentified surface components. The rings are seen by VIMS to be composed of almost pure water ice with small amounts of contamination/coloration that seem to be more abundant in the inner portion of Saturn's rings and in the ring gaps. VIMS has detected radial structure in the composition of Saturn's rings all the way down to the roughly 2-km resolution limit of the data obtained during Saturn Orbit Insertion (SOI). Titan is shown to have strong atmopheric fluorescence at 3.3 μm due to methane, a variegated surface of roughly a factor of 2 in albedo contrast that seems mostly due to textural differences rather than compositional differences, and definite evidence of topography and geologic structures.

Affiliated with

Also associated with

No associations

Rating

Cassini VIMS at Saturn does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.

If you have personal experience with Cassini VIMS at Saturn, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Cassini VIMS at Saturn will most certainly appreciate the feedback.

Rate now

Comments { 0 }

Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-1687999