Characterization of Enigmatic Saturn's Ring B by Cassini Radio Occultations

Details Characterization of Enigmatic Saturn's Ring B by Cassini Radio Occultations Characterization of Enigmatic Saturn's Ring B by Cassini Radio Occultations

Dec 2007

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2007agufm.p43b1296m&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2007, abstract #P43B-1296

Physics

6265 Planetary Rings, 6964 Radio Wave Propagation, 6969 Remote Sensing

Scientific paper

Cassini radio occultation observations of the extinction and near-forward scattering of 0.94, 3.6, and 13 cm- wavelengths sinusoidal signals have shed much new light on the structure and physical properties of Saturn's main ring system, especially enigmatic Ring B. As of June 2007, the occultations covered 15 distinct ring longitudes and roughly two distinct ranges of ring opening angle B; the first 12 covered B = 19.5-23.5 deg, and the last three B =14-15 deg. Four sub-regions of Ring B, identified as B1 to B4 (bounded by rough ring radius = 92, 99, 104.5, 110, 117.5 thousand km) exhibit clearly distinct structure (Marouf et al., 38th DPS Meeting, 38.05, 2006). Region B2, in particular, is characterized by remarkable 'bi-stable' states, where the optical depth abruptly flip-flops between optical depth of about 2 and more than 5. We consider observational evidence that bear on physical characterization of the observed structure (particle sizes, particle-cluster-sizes and orientation, spatial cluster density, vertical ring profile and physical thickness, ...). On the signal extinction side, this includes differential extinction of the three radio signals, and apparent variation of optical depth with observation longitude and ring opening angle (azimuthal asymmetry). On the forward scattered signal side, it includes strength, bandwidth, spectral shape and Doppler drift-rate of observed spectrogram features. We present representative results for selected features in regions B1, B2, and B4. Of particular interest is the detection of quasi-periodic ring structure of period roughly 100 meters in region B2 (and perhaps B4). In contrast with the prevalent gravitational wakes, the periodic structure is not azimuthally inclined and appears to be an independent structure superposed on the background wake structure (Thomson et al., submitted 2007).

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