Remarkable Opposition Surges on the Satellites of Saturn Revealed by the Cassini Spacecraft

Details Remarkable Opposition Surges on the Satellites of Saturn Revealed by the Cassini Spacecraft Remarkable Opposition Surges on the Satellites of Saturn Revealed by the Cassini Spacecraft

Dec 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufm.p31c..05b&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #P31C-05

Physics

6055 Surfaces, 6280 Saturnian Satellites

Scientific paper

Observations of planetary satellites over a range of viewing geometries offer important clues to the physical properties of their surfaces. Spacecraft observations enable a dramatic expansion of such observations because of new wavelengths and viewing geometries not attainable from Earth. The four year Cassini tour has obtained nearly a full excursion in solar phase angle (the angle between the observer, the object and the sun) from 0 to 180 degrees. The Cassini Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) and the Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) measured opposition phase curves of the major icy satellites between 0.2 and 5.1 microns. The moons all exhibit a remarkable opposition surge as they become fully illuminated, increasing in brightness by about 30 percent in the last degree. This phenomenon is wavelength dependent and appears to be accentuated by the presence of small particles from the E-ring. Also, bright regions tend to exhibit greater surges. Modeling of the observations enables the fluffiness of the surface, and thus the collisional and depositional history of the surface, to be characterized. The measurements at very small solar phase angles (less than degree) yield clues regarding optical phenomena such as coherent backscatter. Work funded by the NASA Cassini Data Analysis Program.

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