Titan Surface Composition Analysis Using VIMS

Details Titan Surface Composition Analysis Using VIMS Titan Surface Composition Analysis Using VIMS

Sep 2006

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2006dps....38.4805m&link_type=abstract

American Astronomical Society, DPS meeting #38, #48.05; Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 38, p.574

Astronomy and Astrophysics

Astronomy

1

Scientific paper

We are continuing our study of the composition of Titan's surface using the Cassini Mission Visual and Ir Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) data [see McCord et al., Planet. & Space Sci, 2006 for earlier results]. Our earlier results using the Ta encounter data suggested that water ice, perhaps contaminated with a darker material that is red in the visual range, matches the reflectance of the Titan regions that are darker in the visual range and that the brighter regions studied are not matched by water ice or unoxidized tholin. We have since analyzed data for all useful encounters up to T20 and have emphasized two approaches: 1) attempts to identify the number and identity of spectral endmembers present and 2) search for spectral features in the methane windows, because these approaches can be taken without removing the atmospheric effects, a difficult task. At the writing of this abstract, we have detected no spectral features above the intrinsic noise level in any of the methane windows using our methods. This could suggest that a variety of molecules are not present within certain limits. In the process, we determined that the VIMS data noise characteristics are nearly Gaussian and at the level consistent with the design and calibration. The number of spectral endmembers detectable in the VIMS data appear to be limited to only a few. Examples of these and their distributions will be shown. As a byproduct of this study, we find that the atmosphere scattering contribution may be detectable and partially removable as an endmember in a spectral unmixing analysis.

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