Progress on Analysis of Keck AO Observations of the Uranian Rings around the Time of the 2007 Ring Plane Crossings

Details Progress on Analysis of Keck AO Observations of the Uranian Rings around the Time of the 2007 Ring Plane Crossings Progress on Analysis of Keck AO Observations of the Uranian Rings around the Time of the 2007 Ring Plane Crossings

Oct 2010

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2010dps....42.2211d&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #42, #22.11; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 42, p.990

Physics

Optics

Scientific paper

In 2007, the rings of Uranus appeared edge-on as seen from Earth for the first time since their 1977 discovery. Three ring plane crossings (RPXs) occurred from Earth's perspective over a 9.5 months period: 3 May 2007, 16 August 2007, and 20 February 2008. The Sun crossed the ring plane on 7 December 2007 (equinox). We observed at and near RPX using the Keck telescope equipped with the NIRC2 camera coupled to the adaptive optics system. This period includes the RPX on August 16, and observations of the dark (unlit) face of the rings (May-August; December) and the lit side under small ring inclination angles (August-September). Together with observations obtained in previous and later years, the data cover a wide range of viewing and emission geometries.
As the rings are partially obscuring each other when the rings are close to being edge-on, we developed a model to analyze the observations. The model was tested by Dunn, de Pater and Stam (2010, Icarus 208, 927-937) against observations of the uranian rings that were taken in July 2004. Since then we made several improvements to the model to optimize it for low ring inclination angles. In this talk we compare Keck observations with models under a wide range different viewing and illumination angles.

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