Prediction of Saturn's rings temperatures during the 2009 Equinox

Details Prediction of Saturn's rings temperatures during the 2009 Equinox Prediction of Saturn's rings temperatures during the 2009 Equinox

Dec 2008

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2008agufm.p13a1300l&link_type=abstract

American Geophysical Union, Fall Meeting 2008, abstract #P13A-1300

Physics

5465 Rings And Dust, 6020 Ices, 6265 Planetary Rings

Scientific paper

The thermal emission of Saturn's rings has been intensively observed over the past 4 years with the Cassini Composite Infrared Spectrometer instrument CIRS. The Sun elevation above the ring plane has progressively decreased from -26 deg in July 2004 to -4 deg in September 2008, which implied a seasonal variation of the ring temperature, as the mutual shadowing between icy particles in rings became more important. The equinox, which will occur in August 2009, will provide a unique opportunity to study the thermal contrast between the North and South sides of the rings at this particular geometry, and the heating rate of the newly lit North side. Ring particles will reach their minimum temperature as the solar heating will reach its minimum. Several observations will be dedicated to measuring the temperature on both lit and unlit side of the rings with the CIRS instrument around the equinox, at different geometries (phase angle, spacecraft elevation, spacecraft azimuth). Modeling the ring temperature during the equinox will provide some insights on the vertical structure of the rings and the dynamic of particles. We first present the predicted temperature of rings obtained with a simple model assuming that the ring temperature is mainly driven by the albedo, the distance from Saturn and the structure of rings (isolated particles or slab). This will give us an approximation of what we could see in 2009. We then present a new model that couples N-body dynamical simulations and thermal modeling in order to study the effect of the vertical structure of the rings. This research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under contract with NASA. Copyright 2008 California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged.

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