Five years of Cassini CIRS Thermal Observations of Saturn's Rings

Details Five years of Cassini CIRS Thermal Observations of Saturn's Rings Five years of Cassini CIRS Thermal Observations of Saturn's Rings

Sep 2009

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2009dps....41.2501s&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #41, #25.01

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

Scientific paper

An extensive set of thermal measurements of Saturn's main rings (A, B, C and Cassini division) has been returned by the Cassini Composite Infrared spectrometer over the past five years. Data on the lit and unlit rings have been acquired over a variety of solar phase angles, spacecraft elevations and local hour angles. The solar elevation angle has varied from 24 degrees at the start of the mission through zero at equinox. Phase angle and solar elevation angle are two of the strongest determinants of ring temperature; the lit face of the main rings cooled by over 30 K with approaching equinox.
Thermal phase curves of the main rings exhibit a nonlinear variation in temperature with phase angle, with pronounced surges at phase angles less than 50 degrees. The larger optical depth regions, such as regions in the A and B rings, also show slight changes in this surge with changing solar elevation. This effect may be related to interparticle shadowing within the rings.
The temperature of the main rings decreases as the solar elevation angle declines. The temperature in the optically thin C ring and Cassini division decreases by only a few degrees over a broad range of solar elevation, decreasing more rapidly at smaller solar elevation. Detailed thermal modeling is under way to fit these data.
This research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA. Copyright 2009 California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged.

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