Modeling Saturn Ring Temperature Variations as Solar Elevation Decreases

Details Modeling Saturn Ring Temperature Variations as Solar Elevation Decreases Modeling Saturn Ring Temperature Variations as Solar Elevation Decreases

Dec 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufm.p13a1302s&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #P13A-1302

Other

6265 Planetary Rings, 6275 Saturn, 6297 Instruments And Techniques

Scientific paper

After more than four years in orbit around Saturn, the Cassini Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) has acquired a wide-ranging set of thermal measurements of Saturn's main rings (A, B, C and Cassini Division). 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. To first order, 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. Decreasing ring temperature with decreasing solar elevation are observed for both the lit and unlit faces of the rings after phase angle and local time effects are taken into account. For the lit rings, decreases of 2- 4 K are observed in the C ring and larger decreases, 7-10 and 10 - 13 K, are observed in the A and B rings respectively. Our thermal data cover a range of solar elevations from -21 to -8 degrees (south side of the rings). We test two simple models and evaluate how well they fit the observed decreases in temperature. The first model assumes that the particles are so widely spaced that they do not cast shadows on one another while the second model assumes that the particles are so close together they essentially form a slab. The optically thinnest and optically thickest regions of the rings show the best fits to these two end member models. We also extrapolate to the expected minimum ring temperatures at equinox. This research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA and at CEA Saclay supported by the "Programme National de Planetologie". Copyright 2008 California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged.

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