Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astronomy
Scientific paper
May 2008
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008dda....39.1801n&link_type=abstract
American Astronomical Society, DDA meeting #39, #18.01
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astronomy
Scientific paper
Azimuthal variations in the reflectivity (at both visual and radar wavelengths), brightness temperature and optical depth of Saturn's rings have been widely observed and are generally attributed to what are now referred to as 'self-gravity wakes', as observed in numerical models of spontaneous gravitational clumping in a shearing disk. If this wake-dominated picture of the rings is correct, then the variation of transmission with opening angle is likely to deviate from the classical expression, T=e^{-κsin B}, where τ is the normal optical depth and B is the ring opening angle. This expectation is confirmed by recent analyses of both UVIS (Colwell etal. 2007) and VIMS (Hedman etal. 2007) stellar occultation data.
By comparing several occultations whose lines of sight are quasi-parallel to the wakes, we can exploit this apparent variation of τ with B to separate the filling fraction of the wakes, f, from the optical depth in the `gaps' between them. We find remarkably consistent results from occultations at 11 °
Cassini Vims Team
Hedman Matthew M.
Nicholson Philip D.
Salo Heikki J.
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